The criticism of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency ventures is no longer coming only from the left. Some of the most prominent conservative voices in media are now openly calling the administration’s crypto projects a financial disaster for ordinary investors, and in some cases, worse.
Ben Shapiro, one of the administration’s most prominent supporters, acknowledged the scale of the problem directly. When asked whether the Trump family enriching itself to the tune of $4 billion since taking office again in 2024 concerned him, he said, “Of course. I mean, I’ve been calling this out, I think, before pretty much anybody else. If the name were Biden instead of Trump, people would be screaming bloody m*rder and how this was not beneficial to President Trump’s agenda either.”
When pressed on whether the issue was corruption specifically, Shapiro replied, “I mean, both obviously.”
Even Alex Jones declined to defend the crypto tokens associated with the administration, stating that several coins put out by groups connected to the president and his children “were rugpulls.”
The term is significant in the context of World Liberty Financial, the crypto project featuring Donald Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Baron Trump, and several other named team members on its website until recently, when the about page listing those names and photos was quietly removed.
World Liberty Financial is now in a public dispute with one of its largest early backers, Justin Sun, who was previously under SEC investigation until he invested heavily in Trump-affiliated crypto assets, after which the SEC proposed a settlement and dismissed remaining claims. Sun is now alleging that World Liberty Financial embedded an undisclosed blacklist function in the smart contract used to deploy its tokens, and that it was used against him.
He stated, “What was never disclosed to me or any other investors that World Liberty Financial embedded a backdoor blacklisting function in the smart contract used to deploy World Liberty Financial tokens.”
World Liberty Financial responded by calling Sun a repeat bad actor, writing, “Justin’s favorite move is playing the vic tim while making baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct.”
Compounding concerns is a report from Coindesk detailing how World Liberty Financial used approximately $5 billion in its own largely illiquid tokens as collateral on a platform co-founded by one of its advisers to borrow $75 million in real dollars. Analysts have noted that attempting to sell even $8 million worth of World Liberty Financial tokens yields only around $2 million back due to low trading volume, raising serious questions about the collateral’s actual value.
Eric Trump, speaking on a podcast, claimed the family “started the three most successful crypto projects probably in history.” The numbers tell a different story for retail investors. The official Trump coin is sharply down, the official Melania meme coin is down 94%, and World Liberty Financial is also performing poorly.
