No, Trump did not become an overnight ‘crypto billionaire’

President Donald Trump’s meme coin may be a textbook cash grab — not unlike his $60 made-in-China Bibles and his $400 gold sneakers — but it’s not the kind of venture that can catapult his wealth into the stratosphere.

President Donald Trump’s meme coin may be a textbook cash grab — not unlike his $60 made-in-China Bibles and his $400 gold sneakers — but it’s not the kind of venture that can catapult his wealth into the stratosphere. Some news outlets reported an absolute melt-up in Trump’s net worth over the weekend, and those figures have run wild on social media. Respectfully, though, you have to squint really hard and swallow a giant red crypto pill to conclude that the president’s net worth suddenly shot up 800% on the back of a digital asset that is functionally useless (more on that in a moment). He’s still a billionaire, to be sure, but a single-digit one — hundreds of billions of dollars away from the levels of the wannabe tech oligarchs who surrounded him at Monday’s inauguration. Here’s the deal: Calculating the fortunes of wealthy people isn’t as cut and dry as it might be for you and me. Normies like us have wages or a salary and maybe some assets like a house and a retirement account, if you are very lucky. Total those things up, minus any debt, and there you have it. But the super-rich are often loaded up with a range of assets, like stock options and stakes of private companies whose values are a bit murkier. In financial media, Forbes and Bloomberg have whole teams dedicated to reporting on the day-to-day fluctuations of the world’s wealthiest people. Both estimate Trump’s fortune, which is largely tied up in real estate and his majority stake in his social media business, Truth Social, is valued at just over $6 billion.