New in 2025: crypto billionaires are paying Trump to halt SEC investigations

The crypto industry was one of the biggest sponsors of Donald Trump’s 2024 election campaign, and their sponsorships are proving to be very profitable investments in 2025. Several well-known crypto billionaires, whose companies were still under investigation by the SEC during Joe Biden’s presidency, are relieved that all those procedures were halted under Trump.

Crypto capital

US President Donald Trump promised during his campaign to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet.” By now, his family has extensive business interests in the sector, selling their own memecoins and tokens, and operating a substantial stablecoin business.

In a memo drafted at the start of his new term, US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche argued that it would be preferable for regulators like the SEC to start overseeing digital assets “outside the scope of criminal prosecution”, roughly translated as “look but don’t touch.” Paul Atkins, a long-known crypto advocate, was named as the new chairman of the SEC. Both appointments had an immediate impact, as several ongoing lawsuits against crypto companies have since been halted (and some well-known billionaires have been exempted from prosecution).

Gemini

A first example is the company of Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (whom you may remember from the movie “The Social Network”). They donated over $3 million to Trump Pacs. in January of this year. A few weeks later, the SEC dropped a long-running investigation into their crypto exchange, Gemini.

The parent company of Crypto.com, another donor to Trump’s inauguration, donated $10 million. Six weeks later, the SEC closed its investigation into Crypto.com. In August of this year, the Trump family’s media group also signed a multibillion-dollar contract to purchase a token issued by Crypto.com. Both those investments have proven very profitable.

The SEC also dismissed similar cases against Nova Labs, the company behind the Helium blockchain network, and the NFT trading platform OpenSea (both backed by the renowned billionaire Andreessen Horowitz).

But the most famous donor who “bought” political goodwill remains Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain and coin.  As a foreigner (Sun is Chinese), he is prohibited from making direct donations to US political elections, so he decided to spend some $75 million between November 2024 and January 2025 on digital tokens from World Liberty Financial, a crypto company controlled by the Trump family.

In February, the lawsuit filed by the SEC against Sun and his companies was paused.

It remains unclear whether the SEC will continue to investigate all the aforementioned crypto companies in the next few years, but I wouldn’t bet on it.