In just over a month, the crypto market has lost $1.2 trillion in value. The steady declines since mid-October have erased much of the gains received by both small and large investors. Among the latter is a very well-known figure: U.S. President Donald Trump, who is also partly responsible for the euphoria the sector experienced until October.
But the Trump effect has completely vanished, with digital assets falling back to levels seen before his term. His direct support of the sector and entry into crypto businesses fueled short-term excitement, but investors have forgotten about that now. Today, the focus of the debate is the potential AI bubble and interest-rate cuts. And the Trump business empire has felt the shock of reality: since September, it has lost at least $1 billion of its fortune (dropping from $7.7 billion at the beginning of September to the current $6.7 billion), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a decline largely due to the Trump family’s growing ties to crypto projects.
The Trump family went all-in on digital assets: they launched tokens, created companies, invested in the industry, pardoned convicted crypto tycoon Changpeng Zhao, and legislated in favor of the sector, pushing major cryptocurrencies to historic highs. But in this market — marked by extreme volatility and speculation — no one is spared, not even the president. A good example of this was the launch, a few days before Trump’s inauguration, of the memecoin $TRUMP, a token with no backing whatsoever beyond being linked to the tycoon’s image. Minutes after its release, euphoria broke out and the token reached a value of more than $15 billion. But like every speculative wave, the excitement was short-lived, and its price plunged by up to 76% within a few hours.
In these past months, $TRUMP has gone through ups and downs, but since mid-August its declines have intensified, and it has lost around 40% of its value; since its launch, it is down 85%. As of today, the size of the Trump family’s stake in the project is unclear; according to Bloomberg estimates, those close to him hold around 40% of all outstanding tokens. At current prices, that stake is worth about $310 million, implying a loss of $117 million since the end of August.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Trump family’s crypto empire. With their flagship project, the crypto platform World Liberty Financial, they issued the WLFI token, which has plunged 38% since early September: those close to the president hold an amount of tokens that reached an accounting value of roughly $6 billion at its peak, but which today are worth half that — about $3.15 billion — according to Bloomberg data. These assets, however, are not included in the agency’s calculations, as they are not traded on organized markets.

The chief executive of Robinhood Markets took the stage at the online brokerage’s annual summit in Las Vegas this fall decked out in a race-car driver’s jumpsuit and customized Nikes.
Vlad Tenev told the hundreds of cheering traders in the audience that they had chosen “one of the most intense lifestyles out there.” He compared trading to driving a race car. “A finely tuned machine can make all the difference,” he said, “and that’s the role we feel Robinhood plays for our active investors.”
Risk-taking is back for individual investors, and few people have done more to stoke those spirits than the 38-year-old Tenev. Robinhood’s trading app makes it easy not just to buy and sell ordinary stocks, but to invest in options, cryptocurrencies and other exotic financial products, even to make sports bets and play the prediction markets.
The company’s critics liken the environment to a casino, but its fans credit Robinhood with democratizing the lucrative world of sophisticated investments.
“He’s almost building a cult,” said Aaron Cook, a 28-year-old plumber who was in the audience in Las Vegas. Cook said he had used his profits from trading stocks, options and memecoins to buy a Jeep Wrangler and a $60,000 home.
A host of new products have entered retail-investment markets in recent years and worked their way into the mainstream. Investors are wagering on the price of bitcoin and piling into ultrarisky types of options, such as the “zero-day” variety that expire rapidly and require perfect timing. They are buying futures contracts tied to all sorts of events, betting on whether a Taylor Swift album will top the Spotify charts or whether the Green Bay Packers will beat the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day.

Victor Incendy (the missing CEO) remains an international fugitive and has not been found to this day. He disappeared amid allegations of financial deceit and fraud related to Cascade International Inc.

Winning, as it relates to investing, means having the financial means to achieve your goals.
Beating some arbitrary benchmark is irrelevant.

Winning, as it relates to investing, means having the financial means to achieve your goals.
Beating some arbitrary benchmark is irrelevant.

None of my friends like to talk about investing. From the little that they’ve said, it seems that they all use financial advisors. I’ve got no problem with that, but find investing very interesting and would enjoy talking about it.

“The health of the equity market in the United States, it’s among the least healthy in my entire career,” Gundlach said. “The market is incredibly speculative and speculative markets always go to insanely high levels. It happens every time.”
/snip
“The next big crisis in the financial markets is going to be private credit,” he said. “It has the same trappings as subprime mortgage repackaging had back in 2006.”
/snip
“There’s only two prices for private credit — 100 or zero,” Gundlach said. “It looks like it’s safe because you could sell it any day, but it’s not safe because the price at which you sell will be gapping lower day after day after day.”
Take private loans to Renovo Home Partners. BlackRock Inc. just decided that the loans it made to the struggling home improvement company are worthless. About a month ago, it deemed the debt to be worth 100 cents on the dollar.

 Key Points
• Wages for the top 25% of the U.S. workforce are rising by 4.6% annually,
while the lowest quarter sees only 3.6% annual gains.
• Financial stress is increasing for lower-income households, 
with 29% living paycheck to paycheck and a record 6.7% of subprime auto loans delinquent.
• The economy’s growth is increasingly reliant on affluent households, 
as lower-income consumers face rising costs and reduced spending capacity.