Trump family assets plunge 90% or more, outpacing crypto crash

Portland, Oregon – The crash on Dec 2 in crypto miner American Bitcoin was instantaneous. At 9.31am on Wall Street, just one minute after trading opened, its shares plunged 33 per cent. Five minutes later, losses ballooned to 42 per cent and then, for a brief moment, to more than 50 per cent.

It was all so spectacular that American Bitcoin quickly became the symbol of not just the crypto market wipe-out of late 2025 but also the collapse of the myriad ventures that the Trump family has been promoting in the digital-currency world over the past year. For as much as broader crypto markets have sunk these past two months – roughly 25 per cent in the case of bellwether Bitcoin – projects that are tied to the Trump family are down far, far more.

World Liberty Financial, co-founded by President Donald Trump and his sons, has seen its WLFI token tumble 51 per cent from its peak in early September, more than both Bitcoin and an index of smaller digital tokens.

Alt5 Sigma, a company promoted by the Trump sons, has plunged around 75 per cent as it deals with a growing number of legal problems.

Then there are the memecoins named after the President and his wife Melania, which have fallen around 90 per cent and 99 per cent respectively from their record highs back in January.

American Bitcoin, co-founded by Mr Eric Trump, is down 75 per cent after the big drop on Dec 2. 

These moves have put a big dent in the huge piles of crypto wealth that the first family amassed earlier in the year. But they also carry a broader significance for both the digital asset industry and the President’s public image.

Mr Trump’s embrace helped boost a wide array of crypto tokens during the early months of his second term and turned the price of Bitcoin into a marker of his political success.

Now, though, what looked like a Trump premium has suddenly turned into a Trump drag, taking out one of the central pillars holding up crypto assets and offering an indication of just how quickly confidence in these speculative markets – and even in the President himself – can dissolve.

“The Trump presidency has been a double-edged sword for legitimacy,” said law professor Hilary Allen at American University’s Washington College of Law.

“Trump started launching his own crypto projects, many of which lost value very quickly. If the goal was to achieve legitimacy through the Trump family, that’s not helped.”

While the President has recently toned down his public promotion of crypto, Mr Eric Trump took to social media on Dec 2 to blame American Bitcoin’s bad performance on the end of a lock-up period for its shares, rather than any broader weakness. 

“Our fundamentals are virtually unmatched,” he wrote on X. “I’m 100% committed to leading the industry.”

To be clear, the dramatic moves in the assets associated with the Trump family are hardly new for an industry that has been defined by its volatility. Digital tokens have experienced big drops in the past, before bouncing back.

On Dec 2, as American Bitcoin struggled, the original cryptocurrency had one of its best days in the last few weeks, rising around 6 per cent.

Earlier in 2025 though, it seemed like Mr Trump’s embrace of the technology might be enough to take digital tokens out of their endless cycle of boom and bust and turn them into a more reliable part of the financial system. If nothing else, many crypto believers figured that he would have enough power to ensure the success of the projects he cared about the most.

And for a while, the various cross-promotions seemed to be working. People looking to express their support for the President brought up Trump tokens and pushed up their value.

Gryphon Digital shares surged 173 per cent when it announced that it was merging with Mr Eric Trump’s American Bitcoin in May. On the first day of trading after the merger, in September, shares of American Bitcoin rose another 16 per cent.

These projects were all helped by policies and regulatory changes that Mr Trump promoted, led by legislation that aimed to bring crypto stablecoins, tied to the value of the US dollar, into the mainstream. 

But the signs of trouble have been mounting over time.

The memecoins that were launched right before the inauguration, with lots of promotional muscle from Mr Trump himself, have steadily lost steam over time, with just occasional moments of relief. There was a rally in April after the President offered to join some of the biggest holders of the coin for dinner.   

The problems, though, have gone beyond the vagaries of the broader markets. American Bitcoin has had to deal with a report that the mining machines it uses, from a Chinese manufacturer, have been investigated as a risk to US national security.

Alt5 Sigma, a public company that set out to buy one of the tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, has faced an exodus of executives after announcing that one of its subsidiaries faced a criminal probe in Rwanda. 

The crypto crash since October has taken out more than US$1 billion of the wealth that the Trumps generated through their crypto ventures and other businesses. But they are still sitting on significant profits, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

It is retail investors who bought into assets when they were flying near their peaks who are nursing the most painful losses. 

Mr Kevin Hu, a 22-year-old student in Vancouver, positioned for a continued rally but saw his portfolio of digital tokens drop by as much as 40 per cent by mid-November.

“You’d think with the President being so pro-crypto, it would create a floor,” he said. “But the market didn’t respond that way. And the stuff around the memecoins, it just turned a lot of people off.” BLOOMBERG