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Eric Trump has said growing demand for cryptocurrencies could “save the US dollar” by attracting investment flows from around the world into America.
The president’s son, a prominent crypto advocate, told the Financial Times that the digital assets boom would channel “trillions . . . from around the world in wonky currencies” towards the US.
“Mining bitcoin here, and being financially independent and running a kind of financial revolution [out] of the United States of America . . . I think it arguably saves the US dollar,” Trump said.
He was speaking on Tuesday hours after ringing Nasdaq’s opening bell to celebrate this month’s market debut for crypto company American Bitcoin, where he has a stake worth more than $500mn.
Trump’s comments come after the US dollar has fallen sharply this year as President Donald Trump’s trade war and his repeated attacks on the Federal Reserve — which on Wednesday cut interest rates for the first time this year — shake investors’ faith in the world’s de facto reserve currency.
The US currency has also been hit by concerns over America’s debt pile, which is expected to swell further as a result of President Trump’s landmark tax bill.
The president has argued for sharply lower interest rates since he took office and previously said “you make a hell of a lot more money with a weaker dollar . . . than you do with a strong dollar”.
He has also vowed to make America the “crypto capital” of the world and encouraged a light-touch regulatory environment for digital assets that has propelled bitcoin and other tokens to record highs.
The Trump family’s crypto interests span a Truth Social Bitcoin ETF, two memecoins and a bitcoin treasury venture attached to Trump Media & Technology Group.
Eric Trump defended the launch of the $MELANIA and $TRUMP memecoins earlier this year as a bit of “fun”.
“[People] want to bet on a coin, or they want to bet on a player. They want to bet on a celebrity, or they want to bet on a famous brand. Or they just love somebody to death, and they want to buy, you know, a kind of small piece of them, via digital currency.”
He added he had taken pride in setting up several crypto-related companies without the help of some of America’s premier financial institutions.
“It’s almost like the ultimate revenge against the big banks and modern finance,” he said, months after the Trump Organization sued Capital One, alleging its accounts there were closed in 2021 for political reasons, which the bank denies.
“You realise you just don’t need them. And frankly, you don’t miss them,” he added.
Trump said he was referring to “all” of Wall Street’s biggest lenders as well as their “top people”.
US banking executives fear that stablecoins, a form of digital cash usually pegged one-for-one against the dollar, could suck money away from the traditional banking system if they offer better yields.
White House officials hope stablecoin issuers including Tether and Circle, emboldened by the first major crypto regulation passed by Congress in July, will step in to buy a large slice of the trillions of dollars worth of bonds the Treasury issues each year. Stablecoin operators collect interest income on those holdings.
Eric Trump last year co-founded World Liberty Financial Inc (WLFI), a crypto venture backed by his family that runs a stablecoin called USD1, which is pegged to the US dollar.
The president held 15.75bn separate WLFI tokens at the end of 2024, according to financial disclosures, which at Wednesday’s trading price would be worth more than $3bn.
Eric Trump played down the financial benefits to the family from its crypto interests.
He said: “If my father cared about monetising his life, the last thing he would have done is run for president, where all we’ve done is un-monetise our life.”
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