Surprising crypto giants pour millions into Trump's inaugural fund

The latest filings revealed that President Donald Trump raised $239 million for his inaugural fund between Nov. 15 and April 20, with crypto industry firms and leaders emerging as prominent donors.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has made the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee’s filings public on Apr. 20.

The latest filings show that President Donald Trump’s inaugural fund received contributions of $239 million for his inaugural fund between Nov. 15 and April 20, with crypto industry firms and executives emerging as significant donors.

Crypto payments firm Ripple donated $4.8 million, blockchain enterprise Solana Labs donated $1 million, the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) platform Ondo Finance donated $1 million, blockchain software firm Consensys donated $100,000 to the fund, and stablecoin issuer Circle donated $1 million. Hayden Adams, CEO of the decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap, donated more than $245,000. All these donations were made in January 2025.

In December 2024, popular stock and crypto trading exchange Robinhood donated $2 million. Coinbase, the leading crypto exchange in the U.S., donated $1 million, Payward Inc., behind the Kraken crypto exchange, donated $1 million, and Yuga Labs, the blockchain firm well known for developing the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) digital collectibles collection, donated $100,000 the same month.

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Surprising crypto giants pour millions into Trump’s inaugural fund

Note that Uniswap, Ripple, Consensys, Kraken, and Coinbase have seen the enforcement actions that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier began against them closing after Trump assumed the office of the White House.

Moreover, Trump and his wife, Melania, both launched their meme coins on the Solana blockchain network. Trump’s involvement with World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance project, has already raised eyebrows.

Other giants from outside the crypto industry also donated to Trump’s inaugural fund, the filings revealed. BlackRock, Meta, Amazon, Adobe, McDonald’s, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, among others, donated $1 million each to the fund.

The committee accepted approximately $245 million, but refunded around $6 million.