The New York Times reports:

An up-to-date tally of Trump followers turned crypto investors is in. And for them, the overall results are remarkably bad.

Nearly 1 million people who bought President Trump’s memecoin have lost money through the end of June, according to a report by the cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen. Their losses total $3.81 billion.

The analytics firm’s assessment was calculated this week after Mr. Trump signed an annual financial disclosure showing that he walked away with a $636 million payout on the same crypto bet, part of a haul of at least $2.2 billion from all of his business ventures in 2025.

The odds were always in his favor. Mr. Trump profited whether the price of his memecoin went up or down. He collected returns whenever anyone traded the tokens, as he repeatedly pushed his followers to do, using his Truth Social account to promote the coin.

Once a crypto skeptic, Mr. Trump embraced the profit-making opportunity of digital currencies in 2024, while he was running for president. He and his sons founded a crypto start-up called World Liberty Financial, which soon began selling a coin called $WLFI that has also declined sharply.

Three days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump unveiled a second Trump-branded investment — the $TRUMP memecoin, a type of novelty currency with little practical value.

“It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “Join my very special Trump community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW!” But that turned out to be bad advice.

Most crypto transactions are publicly visible, recorded on a digital ledger called the blockchain. That allows analysts to trace purchases of digital coins from individual crypto accounts, known as wallets. Nansen’s data shows that, as of the end of June, 988,905 buyers of the $TRUMP memecoin have lost money, representing roughly two out of every three buyers.

Cumulatively, these 988,905 wallets have lost a total of $3.81 billion, including buyers who have held on to their stash and recorded paper losses, according to Nansen. The coin was trading at $1.76 as of Friday, down 97 percent from its peak price of $75.35.

Nicholas Pinto is among the losers. A frequent crypto trader who voted for Mr. Trump in 2024, Mr. Pinto said he invested a total of roughly $500,000 in the $TRUMP coin, and has now lost about half that investment.

“He is leveraging the power of being president to launch currencies, when he seems trustworthy in the public’s eye,” Mr. Pinto said in an interview. “It is kind of incredible. It is almost a legal scam.” [Continue reading…]