Former President Donald Trump, who built his billion-dollar fortune in the brick-and-mortar world of real estate, is getting a financial boost from digital assets including cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, a new financial disclosure form shows.
According to his filings, the Republican presidential nominee owns between $1 million and $5 million in Ethereum. Although that’s not a massive sum considering Trump’s other holdings and status, it’s surely going to be a plus for the crypto lobby he’s been looking to win over in recent months.
Tech executives and crypto leaders s have started to embrace the former president this election cycle, seeing Trump as a much friendlier face than President Joe Biden or presumptive Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, is also a crypto-friendly leader who owns Bitcoin holdings that are valued at between $100,001 and $250,000, according to a financial disclosure filed earlier this week.
While speaking to a crowd of some 3,000 people at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Trump promised to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler on his first day in office because of his opposition to cryptocurrency. Trump also promised to establish a strategic national Bitcoin reserve, reaffirmed his stance that the U.S. must emerge as a crypto capital and superpower in the world, and claimed Bitcoin may one day surpass the market cap of gold.
“This [Bitcoin] is the steel industry of 100 years ago,” he said.
Trump also made $7.15 million from his line of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, a unique digital asset that can take the form of art, videos, and other types of digital content stored on a blockchain network and traded using cryptocurrency as a means of exchange. In 2022, Trump jumped into the NFT market for the first time, launching a collection featuring images of him depicted as a superhero, astronaut, and cowboy.
The move by Donald Trump towards the cryptocurrency market, with Ethereum at the center of his portfolio, represents a significant step forward for the perception and adoption of digital assets.
[Source: QZ]
