Digital Asset News host Rob discusses Trump's crypto earnings and the launch of OpenUSD stablecoin
A solo commentary episode from the Digital Asset News channel examining Trump family crypto profits and a new institutional stablecoin initiative.
Summary
The episode opens by framing the discussion around the concept of "sphere of control" — distinguishing between things viewers can and cannot influence. He presents Reuters data showing the Trump family made at least $2.3 billion from crypto, with President Trump personally disclosing $1.4 billion, drawn from meme coin sales and World Liberty Financial (including $520 million from World Liberty Financial token sales). He walks through Trump's 2025 financial disclosure document, noting significant Bitcoin and Ethereum holdings alongside the meme coin activity, and plays a clip of Trump deflecting questions about his personal involvement. He then broadens the insider-trading discussion to Congress, referencing Nancy Pelosi, Ro Khanna, and others who have outperformed the S&P 500, framing this as a systemic issue beyond any single political figure. He then pivots to what he considers actionable news: the launch of OpenUSD, a new stablecoin backed by over 140 institutions including BlackRock, Stripe, Coinbase, Visa, and Mastercard, launching natively on Solana, Base, Stellar, Polygon, and Tempo. He closes with a live Q&A session covering interest rate projections, profit-taking strategy, and political insider trading.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Sphere of Control
Rob: Today I'm going to introduce you to probably the greatest investor out there, or the biggest rug puller — and I'll let you make that determination. But before we talk about it, I want to preface it with a little bit of info, which is the sphere of control. The things we're going to talk about may be a lightning rod for some people and may get them a little bit charged up. It may get them to say, "That's really awful," or it may get people to say, "That's just how it is." But as a reminder, there are things that you can control and you should worry about, and there are other things that are just outside of that sphere of control. So remember that as we go through this.
And then maybe a little bit of a recommendation from a former president of the United States, George W. Bush, where he says, "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, can't fool me again." So, this is what's going on today.
Trump Family Crypto Earnings
This was from friend of the show, Guy over at Coin Bureau. Shocking — not really shocking, as we know it. Trump alone made $1.4 billion from crypto out of $2.3 billion made by his family. It's a lot of money. Reuters estimates the Trump family made at least $2.3 billion from crypto, while President Trump alone disclosed $1.4 billion in crypto income. Wouldn't that be sweet? His annual financial disclosure for 2025 shows earnings from Trump meme coin sales and almost $800 million from World Liberty Financial, including $520 million from World Liberty Financial token sales.
So of course, when people watch this, they say to themselves, "Well, this is the worst part of the president." Oh no, no, no — just wait. And I'll let you make your decision for yourself. Because remember, as a little step back into history, Melania Coin's doing quite well over 24 hours. I'm just kidding — it was a pump and dump. But official Trump Coin the last 24 hours is up 4.1%. That is true. But wait a second — oh, it's another pump and dump. And then World Liberty Financial — that's the big funds, right? It's doing great, up 0.27%, rank number 41. That is still a pump and dump, and there it goes.
So right here, I'll just be honest with you. I'm not very happy with what the president did. And of course people say, "Well, it's a blind trust, Rob. You don't understand, because he just put that in there and then these companies just went away with it. He's totally innocent." And perhaps. I just leave this up to you to decide what you think of it.
Walking Through Trump's Financial Disclosure
And it all comes down to this information right here — the financial disclosure from Donald J. Trump. I've linked this in the description so you can peruse through it. You can see it's dated June 30th, 2026, and it's a whopping 927 pages or so. But there are some gleams of information to take a look through.
First of all, if you want to look through it, just press Command-F and search for "crypto." It appears in 15 different instances. We can see a crypto wallet virtual USD key, up to $250,000 — that's really nothing to shake a stick at. A cryptocurrency wallet, virtual Ethereum key, $5 million to $25 million, not sold. Virtual Bitcoin key held in cold wallet — looks like this is over $50 million. All crypto wallets, USD key held in cold wallet storage, $42 million. Other wallets, and then up here, cryptocurrency wallet virtual Bitcoin key over $50 million. And to be exact, the income amount is $33,462,000. So it looks like there is a little bit of holding on to Bitcoin — which, let's be honest, most of the people that invested in the meme coins weren't holding on to it because it had some fantastic utility. They were dumping on everybody else as well. And that goes for all the social media influencers that did the same nonsense. That's just the truth.
Then we've got a cryptocurrency wallet for Chainlink, or LINK, $2 million. Cryptocurrency wallet Aave, $2.6 million. And then ENA — I don't know what the heck ENA is — $1.9 million. And then also an Ondo key. Is that right? $100,000? That's really nothing.
So then let's take a look at Bitcoin again just to make sure. It should be in two different instances. Cryptocurrency wallet virtual Bitcoin key, over $50 million in Bitcoin. That's what I think a lot of people did — invested into worthless meme coins and then put it into Bitcoin if they were smart enough. And again, $50 million. And then also I'd like to take a look at Ethereum just to round this out, see if there's anything there. On one of three pages, looks like they have up to $25 million virtual Ethereum key. And $150.6 million — that would be over $50 million, yes. And another virtual key, $50 million.
So in the long and the short of it, he dumped all this stuff. And of course people say, "Well, that's not him, that's his company." Sure, okay, whatever. But these coins led to a massive inflow of holding on to Bitcoin, and for the other part of it, Ethereum, and some other different ones like Ondo, Aave, stuff like that.
But I don't want to say it — let's get it from the horse's mouth. Take a listen.
Donald Trump: "I don't get involved in my personal — we have funds that run my money."
Interviewer: "But you are benefiting—"
Donald Trump: "Well, I've made a lot of money before I became president. And they invest my money and I don't talk to them. I never — I don't even speak to them. So I have many people. I don't know what they call them — closed accounts or something. You put your money in and that's it. I don't talk to them. They're big institutions and they run it. But yeah, I've had a great career in business. I've had a great career."
And then he goes off and talks about how great the stock market is doing and so on and so forth.
So again, I leave it up to you to decide. Was this just something malicious and it was a pump and dump, or the greatest investor potentially of all time? On top of all the senators and congressmen and women who are buying stocks in the stock market because they can and they have insider information. That's pretty much it. Let me know what you think about that in the comment section.
And then before we get into the next statement, I want to remind everybody — all this stuff we just talked about, what can we do about that? Is there something we can do except get ticked off about it? That some people got rug pulled and it was just awful? Or people say, "No, no, no, that's just how business works." Because I can't do anything with that. Nothing at all. So raise your hands and repeat after me: I will not buy meme coins. I will try to be a more responsible investor. Now, you can take the oath or not. But I can tell you, as far as my sphere of control, I can't control that stuff. I just can't.
OpenUSD: A New Institutional Stablecoin
But what I can control is some information that looks pretty compelling. From Nick over at Coin Bureau — this just broke yesterday. Circle's stock is collapsing. It's down 14% today. Here's why. Stripe, Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, and 140 other massive institutions just launched a rival stablecoin called OpenUSD.
Now, on this channel, we've been talking a lot about what I say is the best — and the best was Binance, Ethereum, Solana, Tron, which is what the majority of Tether and Circle, the rails that are being built on. That has changed as of today. And this is why, with my sphere of control, I can change things. Because this OpenUSD is not going to wipe out Circle or Tether — although Tether is having a bit of a rocky road over in the EU as they're being dismissed from all the different banking sectors — but this is the big play. One of the big plays.
OpenUSD. BlackRock and Google join major payments and crypto firms backing OpenUSD stablecoin. Open Standard, led by Zach Abrams, co-founder of Stripe stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, introduced OpenUSD — a stablecoin for global money movement with support from more than 140 companies, including BlackRock and so on and so forth. The stablecoin is scheduled to launch later this year. It targets major barriers to institutional stablecoin adoption, including expensive issuance and redemption, limited participation reserve revenue, and reliance on centralized issuers.
And this is a quote from Shawn Aggarwal, Coinbase's chief business officer: "Stablecoins are the most important thing happening in payments right now. And we're committed to giving our customers access to the best options available, including OpenUSD and beyond." Which I found interesting, because Coinbase and Circle co-founded USD Coin. So they have an agreement between themselves — that's why when you do anything in Coinbase, you'll see the majority of things being pushed to USD stablecoin, and Tether is like the ugly stepsister. They don't really care about that. But they do it because they have an agreement — stablecoin sharing revenue and collaborating on its overarching road map. And not just that, they co-founded the Centre Consortium.
On top of all these things, you have to think to yourself, well, why did they do that, and why did they back this OpenUSD? And it makes sense — they're just hedging their bet as to what's going to be the major stablecoin. It's like, "Could be Circle. We don't want to be Tether. And we've already got an agreement, it looks like, with this OpenUSD."
So the question you have to ask yourself is, all right, well, what rails are they going to be built on? Here you go. OpenUSD by Open Standard launches later in 2026 on multiple rails: Solana, Base, Stellar, Polygon, and Tempo. More chains expected to be added as partners. And this was actually an announcement from Solana today: OpenUSD is launching natively on Solana from day one. New shared stablecoin, owned and governed by its partners.
And just for giggles — how's everything doing today? Solana is up 15% over 7 days, 6% for 24 hours, even though Bitcoin's up. That is pretty nice. And Stellar is up a whopping 11% in the last 24 hours, so not too bad. We'll see where it goes. But again, sphere of control — there are the winners. We'll see where it goes.
Live Q&A
Rob: Now let's get into a little Q&A. I answer all your questions — this is the best part of the show.
The very first comment — Johnny was here earlier before we started. He says, "I can't believe he rug pulled over a billion dollars. I can't believe he made a billion dollars on that." It's pretty crazy. And then of course, again, people will say, "Well, it's just like you said, it's the blind trust. I had no idea what was going on. This just happens. Just made a billion dollars." And that's it.
To me it's like this — meme coins were gambling anyhow. There are two sides to this. We all know meme coins are gambling. Unfortunately, some of the normies that got in thought this was an actual legitimate cryptocurrency project. And they got in, and if somebody makes a billion, usually somebody has to lose a billion — not just one person, but multiple people. I look at that and I feel for those people who probably said, "You know what? I don't got much money, but $5,000 sounds pretty good. I'm going to put it into Trump." And then it's like, "Where's all my money?" That sucks. So you have that edge. And then there's the other edge where some people actually do quite well — but those are the ones that knew the game already. And if you think about it, maybe Gary Gensler was right. I know, not too popular, but here we are.
Ro Khanna — yes, exactly. We all know a crash is coming if it's a true crypto coin play. There's always a crash around the corner. That's why we should always be thinking about taking profits. It should be first on our mind.
I tried to copy his deals. Unfortunately, Miriam Adelson hasn't had hundreds of millions to lend out to the US military. You know, there's also the Nancy Pelosi tracker if you guys want to do something like that. I know some people get ticked off when I say Nancy Pelosi — I guess it is her husband that's doing that, but he could be an investor beating the S&P 500, just like every other insider out there. And even though that's the Democrat side, there's a bunch of people on the Republican side doing the same thing. Although I did see some interesting piece about Ro Khanna and how he's massively outperformed the S&P 500 as well. Just saying.
Jimmy's right — these are things that we can change. The Federal Reserve is now projected to raise interest rates this year. Well, obviously we can't change that, but once they start to raise rates, it's usually not too good for the traditional stock market. And when the traditional stock market sneezes, then crypto gets a cold. Bitcoin gets a cold or the flu. And the rest of the altcoins get pneumonia. So watch out for that.
Actually, I'm curious that Jimmy brought that up — what's the percentage of that actually happening? Let's take a look. A 30/70 split — that's not too bad. July 29th is the next meeting. We'll see if Kevin Warsh gets his ideal, which is he was talking about cutting rates. So that's on July 29th, you've got a 70/30 split. That'll change. September 16th — wow, excuse me — you've got a 35/65 split essentially. They're saying a 50 basis point cut. That's something. Then of course in October, only a one-in-four shot that we're still in the current target rate. So they're going to raise rates at some point — just be aware. And that's going to happen. So if you've got some profits, it's probably good to take some of those if you have them.
Rachelle says, "Pelosi's an amateur compared to many others in office." Yeah. It's not just that, it's also like prediction markets — that's just straight-up insider nonsense.
Rob is beating the profits drum. I try to beat that as much as possible. Take profits. Nobody ever went broke doing that.
Orly says, "F your profits, I want more Bitcoin." Don't we all. And the way to do that — I wish the bulls would just give up. The bulls and the bears, there's a constant fight. And right now Bitcoin is just barely hanging on below — what is it, $59k? Just give up there, bulls. Just give up. Just let it collapse. Come on. Let Rob and all the people on the stream be able to pick up Bitcoin at like $54k, $46k, $47k, something like that. Don't be so greedy. Just let it collapse.
Here's something we can change: stop leaving us narrative and propaganda. Stay humble and stack sats. Pretty solid advice.
Carbaba said, "Rob, is it time to buy Stretch?" I've got some. I hope it goes back to that $100 peg. I think I bought it at like $95, so I'm already down, but yeah, maybe. Seems like that has cooled the market. We'll see.
I get sick of the "Trump is the worst" — the person before him was good as well. Hey, look, here's a newsflash: most of the people in politics are not great people. And that's it.