00:00Today on Forbes, Trump's cryptoassets are nonsense.
00:05The cash they throw off is very real.
00:08Donald Trump released a digital meme on the Friday before his Monday inauguration,
00:13sparking a trading frenzy that led to reports that he had instantly added tens of billions of dollars to his fortune.
00:20Unfortunately, that is nonsense.
00:23Those numbers are based on theoretical prices for cryptoassets that Trump cannot sell right now,
00:29which is why Forbes values them at zero,
00:32in keeping with our methodology of generally excluding unsellable assets from net worth tallies.
00:39The crypto that Trump has already offloaded, however, did bolster his fortune,
00:43adding hundreds of millions of dollars in liquid assets to his balance sheet.
00:48So how did that happen?
00:50Consider World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that, over the last few days as of Wednesday,
00:56boosted the incoming president's cash pile by an estimated $290 million.
01:02World Liberty Financial generates revenue by selling tokens.
01:06Its so-called, quote, gold paper, a Trumpified version of a white paper,
01:10explains that these tokens cannot currently be resold and promise no share of future profits,
01:16offering little to people who like to make money on their investments.
01:20The document indicates that the first $30 million of proceeds stay in the project,
01:25which aims to speed up finance and bring crypto to the masses.
01:29After setting aside that initial pile of cash, however, 75% apparently goes to Trump's company,
01:35and 25% gets split between other insiders, including the family of Steve Whitkoff,
01:40Trump's incoming special envoy to the Middle East.
01:44Trump unveiled World Liberty Financial in August, but sales started with a dud.
01:49By November 2nd, customers had only purchased an estimated $15 million worth of tokens,
01:54not enough to fully fund the project, let alone kick off a cut of the revenue to Trump.
01:59But a few weeks after the November 5th election, a crypto entrepreneur named Justin Sun,
02:04who has been battling the Securities and Exchange Commission
02:07over accusations of unregistered crypto sales and fraudulent market manipulation,
02:12announced that he dumped $30 million into the project,
02:16ensuring that Trump would walk away with some money.
02:19Sales trickled in over the ensuing weeks, reaching an estimated $94 million by this past Saturday,
02:25implying a $48 million take for Trump's entity.
02:29Then things went wild.
02:31At 9.18 p.m. ET last Sunday,
02:34World Liberty Financial announced that it had gotten rid of all the coins
02:38that it initially set out to sell last year, apparently raking in $300 million.
02:44An estimated $206 million of the sales came over a 29-hour stretch in the lead-up to the inauguration.
02:51Trump's cut by that point? About $200 million, according to Forbes' calculations.
02:57He did not stop there.
02:59World Liberty Financial then revealed a new supply of tokens for sale,
03:03jacking the price for each from 1.5 cents to 5 cents.
03:07By Tuesday evening, the project had hauled in another $117 million or so,
03:12with an estimated $88 million headed to Trump's company,
03:15bringing his total to roughly $290 million from just one of his crypto ventures.
03:22In addition to World Liberty Financial, the president sells a digital meme named Trump,
03:27which he announced last Friday, just in time to benefit from some inaugural buzz.
03:32The Trump meme coin doesn't even pretend to have a financial purpose.
03:36Its official site tells buyers to, quote,
03:39while warning them that they are not purchasing an investment opportunity.
03:45The pay structure underpinning Trump meme coin is murky,
03:49but potentially even more lucrative for the president than World Liberty Financial.
03:53Through a company named CIC Digital LLC,
03:56Trump teamed up with another business named Fight Fight Fight LLC
04:00and released 200 million memes, priced Wednesday morning at about $43 apiece.
04:06Purchasers appear to get some sort of digital card.
04:09There are still lots of unknowns,
04:11including the average price at which the president and his team sold their batch of Trump,
04:16as well as the ownership split between his company and Fight Fight Fight LLC,
04:20making it impossible to calculate exactly how much Trump has taken in from the bonanza.
04:25If the president's company held even 50% of the venture
04:28and sold all 200 million tokens for an average of $7,
04:33he could have landed a $700 million windfall before taxes.
04:38For full coverage, check out Dan Alexander's piece on Forbes.com.
04:44This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:46Thanks for tuning in.
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