Berlin, Düsseldorf. Access to the White House can be purchased. This is shown, for example, by the Memecoin Dinner. In May 2025, US President Donald Trump invited the 220 people with the largest positions in his own cryptocurrency named after him.
Many guests remained anonymous, some of whom only have pseudonyms. Those who held the 25 largest positions were rewarded with VIP access, 19 of whom came from abroad.
The income from the Memecoin dinner was low compared to other crypto deals from the Trump family. Two projects in particular have brought the US President profits in the hundreds of millions. Shortly before the US midterm elections on November 3rd, Handelsblatt shows how Trump's crypto network works - and who is trying to buy influence from the US President.
In recent months, the general public has primarily discussed morally questionable processes of influence: such as legal settlements between companies and Trump, the gift of an airplane from Qatar or the multi-million fee from Amazon to First Lady Melania Trump for the documentary dedicated to her on Amazon Prime.
However, when comparing income, the crypto projects were far more profitable for the US President. Two currencies are central to him: the “governance token” WLFI and the stablecoin USD1. The Trump family holds shares in World Liberty Financial Inc. through a network. This company issues and sells both the WLFI and the USD1 coin.
A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to a benchmark such as the US dollar. This is intended to avoid strong price fluctuations. In addition, Trump and First Lady Melania are involved in the cryptocurrencies “$Trump” and “$Melania”. In total, they earned billions of dollars from crypto transactions.
In addition, Trump holds additional unsold crypto assets worth $570 million (WLFI coin) and $240 million (USD1 stablecoin). According to the most recent estimate by Forbes in March 2026, his wealth has now risen to $6.5 billion - $1.4 billion more than when he took office a year earlier. The increase is primarily based on revenue from its blockchain businesses.
Part of this enrichment in office are the countless deals that the US President concludes with entrepreneurs and politicians - some of which are processed via his crypto network. The beneficiaries of Trump's crypto network also include a foreign government as well as convicted criminals and those who were under investigation.
Since it is not obvious to outsiders who is behind the purchases of coins from the Trump family network, deals can be easily concealed. This would allow actors such as foreign states, corporations or private individuals to send money to the US President without having to report it publicly. Only in a few cases has it been possible to prove such payments that were linked to favors or tangible benefits.
The US President has repeatedly rejected allegations of possible conflicts of interest. In July, for example, he told the broadcaster CNBC that nothing about his crypto transactions was forbidden. Trump said he had no knowledge of his own investments. His children, especially son Eric, took care of his financial affairs and he didn't talk to him about it. But: "There's nothing illegal about it, there's nothing wrong with it. I could know about it."
However, past cases suggest that publicly disclosed crypto payments were quickly followed by personal favors. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had investigated crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. She accused him of illegal token sales, artificially inflated trading volumes and disguised advertising by celebrities.
Sun invested $75 million in the WLFI coin. He also agreed to pay a $10 million fine to the US Treasury. The SEC then closed the proceedings. It has not been proven whether there is a connection between the investment and the discontinued proceedings.
The SEC also dropped proceedings against Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, early on. It was about illegal business operations in the USA and the mixing of customer funds. The authority ended the process shortly after listing the Trump family's stablecoin on its own platform.
Since Trump took office in 2025, SEC investigations have also been dropped or lawsuits dropped against other players from the crypto scene, including Ripple, Robinhood and Coinbase. All three donated to Trump during the election campaign, Ripple donated around $4.9 million.
Ripple is a blockchain provider that provides the infrastructure for banks and financial service providers. Robinhood is a neobroker that also trades cryptocurrencies. Coinbase is one of the world's largest crypto trading platforms.
Crypto companies also benefit from Trump's regulatory push for trading in digital currencies: The stablecoin issuer Circle announced that its own IPO was only possible due to the Trump administration's active support for the crypto sector.
One of the beneficiaries is the financial platform Ondo, which donated one million dollars to Trump before he took office. A month after the inauguration, Ondo and World Liberty Financial announced a cooperation. WLFI had previously bought the token from Ondo for several hundred thousand dollars, the price of which subsequently rose.
And the New York Times reported that in return for the million-dollar donation, Ondo received invitations to exclusive dinners with members of the government and, a short time later, Trump's son Donald Jr. appeared at a conference organized by Ondo.
However, the cases described are only examples of the Trump family's entanglements. In order to illustrate the extent of the influence, the following chronicle shows a selection of relevant cases that suggest influence over US President Trump and his family from recent years.
Another number illustrates the extent: in the first fifteen months of his presidency alone, Trump issued around 1,600 pardons - in his entire first term in office there were 250. According to media reports, the president also promised people close to him that he would pardon them before the end of his term in 2029.
