Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wants to make sure the leader of the free world can’t also be the leader of a memecoin empire. The New York Democrat is pushing for a blanket ban on elected officials, senior administration figures, and their families profiting from digital assets like memecoins and stablecoins, a stance that’s taken on new urgency following President Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure.
That 927-page document, released on July 1, showed Trump earned over $636 million from his $TRUMP memecoin business. Crypto wasn’t a side hustle. It was his main hustle, surpassing even his real estate earnings for the year.
The numbers behind the outrage
The memecoin income was just one piece of a much larger crypto portfolio. Trump also reported between $524 million and $594 million from World Liberty Financial, a DeFi project tied to his family. Add it all up and you’re looking at roughly $1.4 billion in crypto-related income for 2025.
The $TRUMP memecoin launched between January 17 and 20, 2025, just days before Trump’s inauguration. The timing alone raised eyebrows. A sitting president launching a speculative digital token while preparing to shape the regulatory landscape for that exact asset class is, to put it mildly, a situation with some conflicts baked in.
