White House crypto czar David Sacks deflected questions Friday about President Donald Trump’s potential crypto conflicts of interests, claiming that the president’s own digital asset ventures—like his controversial meme coin—are “irrelevant” To the administration’s policies in the same field.
“I don’t think it’s had any impact,” Sacks responded when asked if Trump’s crypto projects had affected the industry regulations. “I think it's kind of irrelevant to what we're doing here.”
The president was asked about his remarks shortly after. “personal investment” Trump’s advisor delivered a stinging rebuke to those who invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
“Those are facts not in evidence,” Sacks said.
Trump’s brand has been used by numerous crypto projects before his White House comeback, such as an Ethereum decentralized Finance platform, World Liberty Financial. A Solana meme coin, TRUMP. and many collections of NFT trading card.
Each of those projects appears to have reaped considerable profits—and benefited from the president’s endorsement. Trump’s companies made millions from selling the NFT collection, and the TRUMP tokens, which will be eventually held by Trump companies, are valued at over $10 billion.
The amount of revenue that went directly into the pockets of President Trump is unknown. In the case of World Liberty, an LLC associated with Trump will receive 75% of net revenue the protocol makes in excess of $30 million—a figure that, per on-chain data from Dune, could be greater than $200 million from the WLFI token sale alone.
Federal regulators also changed their crypto policies to favor the projects of the president since Trump began his second term. Hester Pettice, head of SEC’s new crypto taskforce, told the media that Trump’s meme coin was unlikely to fall under its jurisdiction.
A few weeks after that, the SEC published an official declaration stating meme coins were not to be treated as securities.
Andrew Hayward is the editor
