Trump-linked crypto ventures are under pressure from multiple directions. World Liberty Financial is now the subject of a lawsuit filed by crypto billionaire Justin Sun, the CLARITY Act could add wording that would block Trump from earning money through crypto while in office, and Eric Trump has now reportedly been removed from the leadership section of the Alt5 Sigma Corp website after previously appearing on it.
The Trump family reportedly earned $1.4 billion from crypto-related activities in 2025. This estimate came from token sales, memecoins, and related deals, and it helped cover losses in other areas of the Trump family business. However, World Liberty Financial and other Trump-affiliated crypto projects have since been thrown into turmoil. The ethics provisions that may be added to the CLARITY Act are especially notable because much of the reported profiteering ties back to Trump’s presidency. One example is the alleged corruption linked to the pardon of former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, while another involves the sale of 49% of World Liberty Financial to a United Arab Emirates-based entity.
Democrats have pressed for ethics and corruption concerns to be addressed in the CLARITY Act for months. Notably, Republican Senator Thom Tillis recently said he supports adding them and indicated the bill is ready for a hearing. Industry watchers believe the measure needs to clear Congress before the November midterm elections, as a strong Democratic result in those races would likely stall future bills that the crypto lobby wants passed. Up to this point, the legislation that is intended to provide regulatory clarity on crypto tokens and the surrounding industry had been stalled by a dispute between crypto companies and traditional banks related to yield on stablecoins. At the time of this writing, prediction market Kalshi puts the odds of the CLARITY Act being signed into law this year at 46%.
On top of Congress potentially taking Trump’s ability to profit off of crypto out of the president’s hands, World Liberty Financial is also facing a lawsuit from Tron founder Justin Sun. Sun was previously a main figure in a letter to the SEC from Democrat senators that questioned a possible pay-to-play setup based around Sun’s substantial holdings of World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token and the TRUMP memecoin. Court filings show the suit centers on World Liberty Financial freezing assets that belonged to Sun and his related entities, although the suit was notably not filed until Sun’s previous case with the SEC had been resolved.
World Liberty Financial also recently drew criticism for borrowing stablecoins while using its own proprietary tokens as collateral. Observers noted the arrangement had similarities to steps taken by the notoriously collapsed and bankrupted crypto exchange FTX.
Alt5 Sigma Corp is another Trump-connected company now dealing with setbacks, as the company’s stock is down roughly 85% over the past year. The Daily Beast reported that Eric Trump was recently taken off the leadership page of the company’s website, although his role had already been reduced late last year. The company’s leadership page now appears to be offline at the time of this writing. Alt5 Sigma operates as a digital asset infrastructure provider and also previously announced a plan to purchase $1.5 billion worth of WLFI tokens to hold in its treasury.
Separate from everything going on with Trump-connected crypto ventures, Democrats have now also sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick regarding a potential conflict of interest with Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin. The concerns are focused around a loan provided by Tether to a trust connected to the Lutnick family.
The wider crypto industry as a whole is also dealing with a crisis of purpose at this time, mainly in terms of all of the centralization that has been exposed in the industry over the past few months. Tether recently froze USDT assets tied to the Iranian regime, providing a reminder that stablecoins are backdoored and can be controlled by their issuers or governmental bodies overseeing those issuers. And other crypto platforms and projects, such as Arbitrum, have turned to centralized fixes to reimburse users hit by hacks, putting into question whether anyone cares about the “code is law” ethos of crypto anymore (or if anyone ever did in the first place). That said, the potential for bitcoin to act as a permissionless, apolitical money persists on the global stage, as indicated by Iran’s reported preference for the original cryptocurrency in the Strait of Hormuz.
