# Trump Crypto Investors Are $4.7B Underwater

*Author: David Christopher*
*Published: Aug 28, 2026*
*Source: https://www.bankless.com/read/news/trump-crypto-investors-are-4-7b-underwater*

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Investors in Trump-linked crypto products are sitting on at least $4.7B in losses, according to a new [Public Citizen analysis](https://www.citizen.org/article/donald-trump-crypto-investors-4-7-billion-underwater/), even as Trump himself reported making at least $1.4B from crypto last year.

### What’s the Scoop?
- **Adding Up the Damage:** Public Citizen estimates the losses at *$3.2B* from TRUMP, at least *$1B* from WLFI, *$450M* from Trump Media’s Bitcoin treasury, and *$9.3M* from Trump NFTs, while USD1 holders have suffered essentially no losses thanks to its dollar peg. Together, that puts investors at least $4.7B underwater.
- **How They Got There:** The largest figure comes from Nansen, which found roughly 1M of 1.6M retail wallets trading TRUMP on Solana DEXs were underwater by a combined $3.2B. For WLFI, Public Citizen counts a ~$1.04B paper loss on AI Financial’s treasury plus at least $54M lost by retail DEX buyers, while excluding unobservable centralized-exchange losses. The NFT estimate compares their original sale value with recent secondary-market prices.
- **Mostly Paper Losses:** Importantly, Public Citizen says much of the $4.7B remains *unrealized*. For TRUMP specifically, only ~$400M of Nansen’s $3.2B estimate was realized, while the top 1% of winning wallets captured ~$2.7B, framing much of the damage as wealth transferred from later buyers to early ones.
- **Meanwhile, Trump Made Bank:** Trump reported $635M in TRUMP licensing fees and $527M attributable to him from WLFI token sales in 2025, among other crypto income. Public Citizen says it found no apparent evidence he invested his *own* capital to obtain the stakes in either project.
[![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e4/b7/e4b77544-5a37-4f0b-8824-8440aa348476/content/images/2026/08/image-26.png)](https://www.citizen.org/article/donald-trump-crypto-investors-4-7-billion-underwater/)
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