When President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House next year, he’ll do so with a more sprawling business empire and far fewer promises about how he’ll avoid conflicts of interest. While Trump was primarily a real estate developer in his first term, he has since expanded dramatically into new industries including social media and cryptocurrency. The presidency has only further raised his profile and drawn Trump, a lifelong salesperson, to more licensing deals.
Diving into cryptocurrency Just two months before he was elected, Trump announced his family’s cryptocurrency business, World Liberty Financial. The company aims to be a crypto bank where customers are encouraged to borrow, lend and invest in digital coins, though it’s currently only selling nontransferable tokens. An October launch of the coins saw sluggish sales — with just $12 million, well below the $300 million in tokens the platform said it was looking to sell.