Trump earned more than $2.2bn last year. Experts say this extraordinary haul is only part of the story

As president, Donald Trump has made more money than he was making as a private citizen. His personal income in 2025 nearly quadrupled the earnings from his business ventures in 2024, with most of his $2.2bn gain from cryptocurrency – a nascent space that depends almost entirely on how it is regulated by the government.

It is, by any measure, a staggering amount of money – so much that people are struggling to grasp just how unusual this bonanza actual is.

“In the first term, Donald Trump was bringing in a shocking amount of money, but it all seems small potatoes compared to the amount of money he is bringing in now,” said Jordan Libowitz, vice-president of communications for the government watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Working through the disclosures released on Tuesday, Libowitz ticked off a list of questionable income sources, like an increase in revenue at Mar-a-Lago from $10m in his first term to $77m now, or millions in transaction fees for the $Trump memecoin.

“This is only a snapshot and a partial look, because he’s the only president elected since Nixon not to release his tax returns,” added Libowitz. “We’re only getting a part of the story here. We don’t know exact numbers on some of the things. We don’t know some of the specifics of where money is coming from. And we don’t know how much he’s paying in taxes on it, so there’s a lot that he is intentionally leaving to mystery.”

What we do know is that Trump earned the equivalent of about $200 an hour as president during a 40-hour work week – while earning the equivalent of about $1.1m an hour from his private businesses during that same work week.

And unlike his real estate ventures, where much of the income reflects increasing asset values, much of the crypto income comes from trading a digital asset to someone and receiving cash in return, or money pocketed from investments.

“Most of what is reported on his financial disclosure is essentially the cash that is being paid to him for licensing agreements, and his portion of trading fees and stuff like that, which is primarily denominated in dollars,” said Molly White, a cryptocurrency researcher and anticorruption activist who has been closely tracking the influence of technology spending on politics.

“There’s certainly some of it that is crypto-denominated, and it’s usually noted on the line where it’s the estimated value of a crypto holding, but for example, all this meme coin revenue is denominated in dollars, not Trump coin,” added White.

Trump founded World Liberty Financial with his children just three days before re-entering office in January 2025. One transaction in particular set alarm bells ringing in some quarters: a half-billion dollar investment by the United Arab Emirates, buying a 49% stake in the firm. A few months later, Trump authorized the sale of artificial intelligence chip technology to the UAE, despite national security concerns.

“I think that is one of the most glaring conflicts of interest that is visible on this balance sheet,” White said.

The absence of greater outrage speaks to the state of the world today, both Libowitz and White said.

“The general populace accepts at this point that he is corrupt, will be making money any way he can, and the government will let him do so,” Libowitz said. “So I think people have just kind of accepted this is what’s going to happen.”

The numbers “should seem more shocking to people”, he added. “But when you get down to it, it was already so much money that it’s just a number on a page. It’s hard for an average American who’s struggling to pay for gas and for groceries to contemplate the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars. It’s just more money than they’ll never see.”

White pointed to “a steady drumbeat of controversy” during Trump’s second term. “Every day there’s at least one headline that would be jaw-dropping in other circumstances, and people have just become kind of numb to it,” she said.

“I think people just at this point have sort of thrown up their hands and say Trump’s a grifter – of course he’s grifting, that’s what he does,” she added. “And you know, that sort of dampens any outcry.”