He may regret those words now — after his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. gambled $2.4 billion of the family’s fortune to buy bitcoin at its peak last year.
As Forbes reports (2), it originally looked like their gamble would pay off, with a potential $1 billion return. Instead, the Trumps have lost more than $1 billion.
Here’s why they were so ready to bet big on bitcoin, and where it all went wrong.
Smitten by bitcoin
By the time Trump was reelected, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. had converted him into a crypto crusader. The family’s cryptocurrency investments had earned him millions.
That included the newly minted, Trump-owned World Liberty Financial, issuer of stablecoins (designed to have a constant worth of $1 each).
The most pro-crypto president yet appointed Scott Bessent, “the most pro-innovation, pro-crypto (3) Treasury Secretary we’ve ever seen,” as described in a November 2024 X post by Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, a blockchain and cryptocurrency company.
In March 2025, Trump signed (4) an executive order to establish a national Bitcoin Reserve and digital asset stockpile and set out to put in place crypto-friendly regulations.