Author: David Canellis, Blockworks; Translator: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance
It’s safe to say that Donald Trump himself doesn’t actually sign transactions on Polygon and Ethereum.
Nevertheless, those working on crypto projects associated with him are doing their best to make Trump live up to his name: the first on-chain president.
I spent the morning sorting out on-chain data for Trump-related crypto projects—his NFT series (trading cards) and his upcoming DeFi platform World Liberty Financial.
It’s a quick analysis, but the data shows that Trump has earned nearly $84 million in cryptocurrency in two years.
Trump’s four NFT collections on Polygon have generated $7.7 million in cryptocurrencies (WETH and POL fka MATIC).
The revenue comes from royalties from primary and secondary sales. The first set of Trump NFTs went on sale almost two years ago, in December 2022.
(Note: NFT collectibles also bring in additional off-chain revenue as the project accepts fiat currency via credit card payments. Credit card data has not yet been fully on-chain, so these sales have been excluded from the above totals, although they may range in the millions.)
NFT income and cryptocurrency taxes calculated at current prices
There is also an unofficial set of Trump Meme coins that regularly pay transfer taxes to the Trump wallet.
To date, about $240,500 worth of ultra-small tokens with names like “DT Inu” and “Take America Back” have been gifted to Trump.
The token’s token contract automatically forwards small amounts of USDC or ETH to Trump’s wallet every time a transfer is made, including when traded on a DEX.
This has led to a sudden, brief burst of additional crypto income in Trump’s on-chain footprint.
As for how much has been cashed out — it appears that whoever is handling Trump’s crypto has liquidated $3 million in ETH on Coinbase so far.
Trump’s address deposited 1,325.16 ETH to the exchange between November and December 2023, an amount that would be worth $4.9 million if it had been held until today.
Then came the World Liberty token sale. As of this morning, the issuance of WLFI has brought in more than $75 million in revenue for the platform, 80% of which ($61 million) was earned after Trump’s November victory.
Over the past week or so, World Liberty’s wallet has also accumulated a large amount of DeFi tokens AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO, totaling $5.2 million worth at current prices.
The reason is that World Liberty Financial is holding them because it will integrate with these protocols, especially considering Ethena Labs’ newly announced strategic partnership in October.
All of this, combined with Trump’s enthusiasm for buying burgers with Bitcoin before the election, makes it clear that the president-elect does know more about crypto than any other commander-in-chief, or even any American politician.
It’s not without conspiracy, though: World Liberty Financial just sold about $11 million worth of Coinbase wrapped Bitcoin cbBTC, while simultaneously buying an equal amount of wBTC, as shown in the purple and red shaded areas of the chart above.
Whatever the reason World Liberty Financial converted wrapped Bitcoin, it tracks. After all, what would the first on-chain president be like without the traditional crypto drama?
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