Plenty of crypto newbies lost money chasing the bitcoin boom that followed Donald Trump’s reelection. None of them took as big a hit as the president himself.

A leveraged bet at the top of a “buy-high” cycle tends to do one thing: deepen the downside. In 2025, Donald Trump’s family did just that, wagering billions of dollars on bitcoin. 

It was May of 2025, and Trump had just reentered the White House. Crypto markets were going bananas. Donald Trump’s offspring, who had already made the president hundreds of millions richer with various Trump-themed digital assets, decided the next move was to make an institutional-sized bet on crypto’s flagship currency: bitcoin.

At the time, a single bitcoin cost $108,000. But with Trump in the White House, his sons predicted it would rise by more than 50% over the next year. “I think [it] clears $170,000,” Eric Trump declared on stage at a bitcoin conference, confidently dressed in a suit with no tie. “I was going to say between 175 and 150,” added his similarly attired brother, Donald Trump Jr.

The siblings, tasked with managing their father’s business when he returned to the White House, believed in bitcoin enough to put real money on the line. The president had placed his most valuable asset, a 52% interest in the Trump Media and Technology Group worth $2.6 billion, into a trust that left the elder Trump as the sole beneficiary but technically handed control to Don Jr. 

Under the watch of the younger generation, the business strayed from its social-media roots to make a massive crypto bet. It sold $1.4 billion of stock and $1 billion of convertible bonds, then plowed the proceeds into bitcoin. In the two months between the deal’s announcement and consummation, the price of bitcoin kept climbing, hitting $119,000 by July, when Trump Media made its purchases. 

The transaction reshaped the president’s portfolio, reducing his stake in Trump Media to 41%, adding a mountain of debt, and turning Donald Trump into one of the world’s biggest bitcoin investors.

If the heirs’ price targets held, the payoff was clear: roughly $1 billion of gains within a year.

They didn’t hold.

Bitcoin stalled after the purchase. It remained somewhat steady for a few months, giving the Trump family little reason to celebrate—or worry, for that matter. In August, Trump Media poured another $114 million into a lesser-known cryptocurrency, Cronos.

Then everything came tumbling down. In late November, a dip in the broader market pulled down riskier assets like bitcoin and Cronos. By month’s end, Trump Media’s crypto assets, for which it had paid $2.4 billion, were worth an estimated $1.8 billion.

Inside the company, efforts to stem the losses began. Trump Media hedged about one-third of its bitcoin toward the end of the year, seemingly limiting potential downside and upside. January brought another unpleasant gut check: Fed Chairman Jerome Powell signaled, to the president’s dismay, that interest rates would remain elevated. Bitcoin fell 5% in a day, dropping the value of Trump Media’s holdings to an estimated $1.7 billion.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2026/04/08/how-the-trumps-blew-1-billion-on-bitcoin/

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