Trump’s youngest son taught his dad a thing or two about crypto. Now the NYU sophomore is making a fortune before he even turns 20.
“I’ve got a very tall son named Barron. Has anyone ever heard of him?” Donald Trump asked jokingly at an inauguration event in January. The president’s six-foot-eight-or-so youngest son, who rarely makes public appearances, stood up and waved to the crowd. “He said, ‘Dad, you’ve gotta go out and do Joe Rogan,’” Trump bragged, crediting Barron’s insights with helping win more young voters.
He also gives his 19-year-old credit for showing him a thing or two about crypto, the source of the president’s quickly expanding fortune. Barron, who taught his dad what a “wallet” is, cofounded World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company, with his father and older brothers last year, less than two months before the 2024 election. Most financial advisors wouldn’t advise getting your parents into crypto, but most parents aren’t about to be elected president—and when Dad won, World Liberty exploded. Forbes estimates that it’s added over $1.5 billion to the Trump family fortunes—about 10% of which, or $150 million, belongs to Barron.
Born in 2006 to his father’s third wife, Barron was only nine when Trump announced his White House bid at Trump Tower in 2015. Of all the presidential children, Barron has kept the lowest profile, moving to D.C. several months after Dad relocated in 2017 and reportedly enrolling in a Maryland private school where tuition runs upwards of $50,000 annually.
Then in 2018, Melania renegotiated her prenuptial agreement to secure her son better inheritance terms and more involvement in the family business, according to “The Art of Her Deal,” a 2020 biography. It appears to have taken until 2024, when he headed off to college while his dad mounted a third White House run, for Barron to join a venture in World Liberty—but his first try proved enormously lucrative.
Barron has gotten richer—and taller—since the early days of his father’s first presidency.
Chris Kleponis/Pool/Getty Images
The company that holds the Trump family’s stakes in World Liberty, DT Marks Defi LLC, received a total of 22.5 billion crypto tokens called $WLFI in September 2024. In exchange for promotion and allowing the project to use Trump’s name, the company also got 75% of the revenues from World Liberty after the first $15 million in earnings. As of the start of this year, Trump owned 70% of Trump Marks Defi LLC, according to financial disclosures he filed as president. His family owned the remaining 30%. Sons Eric, Don Jr., and Barron are all listed as cofounders, so assuming they shared the 30% equally, that would be 10% for each of them. It’s possible that later dealmaking reduced their stakes.
Initially, the 10% didn’t amount to much. World Liberty tokens couldn’t be resold or transferred once purchased, and token sales were middling. But after Trump won the election, crypto entrepreneur and billionaire Justin Sun, who had been under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced that he was investing $75 million in the project. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Trump’s SEC paused its probe into Sun in February.) Sales took off almost immediately. By August, World Liberty had sold an estimated $675 million worth of tokens, based on figures released by the company and its customers. Barron’s share, after taxes, comes out to around $38 million.
In March, World Liberty announced another product: a stablecoin, called USD1, pegged to the U.S. dollar. The market cap of the currency is around $2.6 billion, which suggests that the business behind it is worth about $880 million. A Trump family entity appears to own 38% of this venture. Barron’s share could be worth about $34 million.
Then in August, World Liberty struck a deal with a publicly traded healthcare company called Alt5 Sigma, which was seeking to become a cryptocurrency treasury company. As part of the deal, Alt5 essentially traded $750 million of $WLFI tokens for one million shares of its stock, 99 million warrants that are worthless if the stock stays below $7.50 (it’s at $2.78 as of Oct. 2), and 20 million warrants exercisable at even higher prices. Alt5 used a pile of money that it had raised to buy $717 million of World Liberty Financial tokens, routing over $500 million to the Trumps’ company and an estimated $41 million to Barron after taxes.
Barron also received an estimated 2.25 billion World Liberty tokens—10% of that initial 22.5 billion-token haul given to Trump’s company. Originally, Forbes valued these at $0 because they couldn’t be resold. But token holders voted in August to unlock 20% of coins, excepting those owned by the founders; additional votes are expected in the future on whether to unlock the rest and whether to allow the Trumps and their fellow investors to trade their tokens. The limited quantity of tokens on the market sell for about 20 cents each, but Forbes still heavily discounts tokens belonging to Barron—and the other founders—because they remain locked up. Taking all this into account, Barron’s assumed 10% share is worth an estimated $45 million today.
It all adds up to a bit over $150 million, no small chunk of change for a 19-year old college sophomore. Barron, who doesn’t have any additional known assets, could pay his $67,430 NYU Stern School of Business tuition more than 2,200 times with that kind of money.
Additional reporting by Dan Alexander.
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