In what US consumer rights think tank Public Citizen called has “the greatest corruption in presidential history”, Donald Trump and his family added $US5 billion in cash to their fortunes this week as his new cryptocurrency was opened to the public market.

The currency, known as WLFI, is owned by World Liberty Financial, a company founded by the US President’s sons, Donald Trump jr and Eric Trump.

A Trump business entity owns 60 per cent of the company and is entitled to 75 per cent of the revenue from coin sales.

As The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday: “The trading debut was most likely the biggest financial success for the President’s family since the inauguration.”

WLFI is likely now the Trumps’ most valuable asset, exceeding their decades-old property portfolio. While the President’s family has continued to pursue property deals around the world since he returned to the White House, the fast-moving crypto business has had the biggest early impact.

Crypto is now the dominant source of Trump’s wealth.

“President Trump’s net worth could roughly be $US15.9 billion, ($A24.3 billion) with about $11.6 billion in uncounted crypto assets,” an investigation by the anti-corruption group Accountable.US found last month – meaning that the digital currencies make up 73 per cent of his total net worth.

In addition to the tokens owned by World Liberty Financial, it found that two Trump-affiliated companies owned 80 per cent of the $TRUMP meme coin as of May and had collected more than $324 million in fees since Trump took office in January.

Meanwhile, Trump Media, which owns his online platform Truth Social, bought $2 billion worth of Bitcoin in July and reserved another $300 million in Bitcoin options.

As America’s self-proclaimed “first crypto president”, Trump has sought to curb regulations against the volatile financial assets.

In July, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, which purports to establish the US’s first regulatory framework for crypto. However, critics noted that the law designated so-called “stablecoins”, of which Trump owns many, as “commodities” rather than “securities”, meaning they face much looser oversight.

Though the bill passed with support from more than 100 Democrats, Maxine Waters from California, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, warned that the bill “legitimises Trump actively building the most corrupt self-dealing crypto environment this country has ever seen”.

Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, described Trump’s latest $5 billion windfall as “blatantly corrupt and a brazen abuse of power”.

“The current occupant of the White House,” she said, “is putting personal profit above the people, using his power to illegally line the pockets of his family and billionaire friends while hanging everyday families out to dry by ripping away their healthcare, food assistance, raising the cost of consumer goods, gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and more.”

While cryptocurrency is often billed as an asset available to everyone that levels the playing field of the finance world, in practice, its ownership is largely concentrated among the wealthiest Americans. According to a Harris poll published in April, nearly half of all crypto owners have a yearly income of more than $150,000, putting them in the wealthiest 10 per cent of the country.

“Your family gets higher energy prices and cuts to healthcare. [Trump’s] family gets billions,” Texan Democrat representative Greg Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said.

“Corruption, plain and simple.”

Washington Democrat senator Patty Murray, a strong advocate for crypto regulation, said that such blatant profiting from the presidency made Trump “easily the most corrupt president in our country’s history,” and emphasised that “Republicans in Congress are not lifting a single finger to exercise basic oversight”.

According to data from OpenSecrets, just three crypto industry-backed US political action committees (PACs) poured more than $133 million into the 2024 election. Though they spent the majority of that money supporting Republicans, nearly 40 per cent of it went to Democrats.

But although all this money helped to buy what Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong called "America's most pro-crypto Congress ever", according to Reuters, just 3 per cent of legislators in the US House of Representatives and Senate own these assets themselves.

But Trump's profiteering far exceeds the crypto holdings of every congressperson put together.

"We have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the damage that this corruption will inflict on the American people," said Bartlett Naylor, a financial reform advocate with Public Citizen.

"The impact of attempts by the Trump family and others to buy and sell politics and politicians will continue to ricochet."

This article first appeared on Common Dreams. Read the original here