Key Takeaways
New ethics filings show President Donald Trump’s accounts purchased an equity stake in bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure company MARA Holdings during the first quarter of 2026, marking the first time a sitting U.S. president has disclosed a direct personal investment in a publicly traded bitcoin miner.
"President Trump's investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions," a spokesperson for the Trump Organization told Decrypt, positioning the trades as outside the president's direct control.
The disclosure, part of a wider OGE Form 278-T filing covering over 3,000 securities trades, shows two purchases of MARA stock valued between $15,001 and $50,000 each. The filings also detailed new crypto-related holdings including two separate purchases of Coinbase (COIN) stock totaling between $150,002 and $600,000, and a purchase of Robinhood (HOOD) shares valued above $100,000.
The investment in MARA represents a significant evolution in the president’s financial exposure to the crypto industry. Where previous interests were structured through passive licensing fees from the Trump Digital Trading Cards NFT collections—generating at least $4.9 million by mid-2023—the new stake represents direct equity ownership in the operational and regulatory fate of a major U.S. bitcoin miner. This aligns his financial incentives with an industry his administration directly oversees, a move with potentially significant conflict-of-interest implications that were a contested point in the recent Clarity Act negotiations.
An equity stake in a bitcoin miner ties returns to a chain of operational variables that royalty income does not. MARA’s revenue is a function of the bitcoin it produces, which is dependent on its share of the global hashrate, network difficulty, and energy costs—all factors far removed from the cultural-attention economy of NFTs.
The exposure is material. When bitcoin’s price fell 1.76 percent in a recent session, MARA’s equity dropped 6.40 percent on the same day. The company’s Q1 2026 results reported a net loss of $1.26 billion, driven by a $1.0 billion negative fair value adjustment on its bitcoin holdings, against revenues of $174.61 million.
The move from passive fee collection to direct equity holding places the President's financial interests squarely in the path of regulatory decisions his own administration will make. This includes everything from EPA energy rules affecting mining operations to Treasury tax proposals and SEC guidance on crypto assets. While the 278-T filings do not indicate any wrongdoing, and ethics rules for a sitting president are limited, the disclosure provides a clearer picture of the administration's financial entanglement with the crypto sector, which includes family profits from the TRUMP meme coin reported at over $1 billion by October 2025.
MARA Holdings, which holds over 26,000 BTC on its balance sheet, is also attempting to pivot toward AI compute and high-performance infrastructure, putting the president's new investment at the intersection of two of the most heavily regulated and politically sensitive industries in today's market.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
