John Oliver took aim at Donald Trump and his family\u2019s various crypto schemes on his return to Last Week Tonight, calling it all \u201ccorrupt and compromised\u201d.<\/p>\n
The host joked that Trump looked as if he was \u201cslowly turning into Mrs Doubtfire\u201d before moving on to the night\u2019s major theme, calling him \u201cthe first crypto president\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump had once referred to bitcoin as \u201ca scam\u201d, but has had a \u201cpretty significant change of heart\u201d after seeing an industry \u201cwilling to spend a shitload helping him get elected\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also saw that it was a fruitful source of money \u2013 in his first year back in office, he made more than $2.2bn, most of which came from his family\u2019s crypto dealings of $1.4bn.<\/p>\n
It has now become the family\u2019s most dominant business interest and they have a \u201ctruly absurd number of crypto-related ventures\u201d, yet Oliver decided to focus on just two of them, \u201cthe big one and the dumb one\u201d which he joked is how Trump refers to his sons Eric and Don Jr.<\/p>\n
The first is the Trump memecoins, which are online jokes converted into real money and focused on novelty.<\/p>\n
Oliver said they are \u201cpump and dump schemes\u201d as they spike in value then immediately crash with insiders selling at the peak.<\/p>\n
Trump announced his own memecoin on social media, closely followed by Melania, and while some thought the president\u2019s account had been hacked, Oliver said the big tell for that would be a \u201cnormal coherent sentence without any randomly capitalized words\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s coin was once worth $50bn, but later crashed \u2013 by the following November it was down 92% since its peak. But in that time, Trump had a $636m payout.<\/p>\n
During that period, in one of his \u201cweirder interludes\u201d, Trump tried to juice his coin\u2019s value up by offering access to the White House in exchange for an investment in one of his ventures.<\/p>\n
But even though the special dinner was \u201ca bust for those who attended it\u201d, Oliver said, the value jumped 30%.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt clearly doesn\u2019t look good for a president to be involved in something like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
More than 1 million people who bought it ended up losing money, which is \u201cpretty shitty\u201d but only the tip of the iceberg, Oliver said.<\/p>\n
Trump also started a crypto company called World Liberty Financial, which was co-founded with his sons and announced weeks before the 2024 election. The company has since become worth more than any other business the family owns.<\/p>\n
Oliver suggested that the company had been used to curry favor with the president through various investments, including one made by Justin Sun<\/a>, the \u201ceccentric\u201d Chinese millionaire who once bought and ate an infamous $6.2m banana<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sun spent $75m on World Liberty Financial tokens and $37.7m on memecoins at the same time as he was fighting an investigation from the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) that claimed he defrauded investors.<\/p>\n After ploughing money into Trump\u2019s business, the SEC paused its investigation and the government eventually settled. Both sides have denied any quid pro quo.<\/p>\n Oliver said it is \u201cby no means a one-off\u201d and spoke about an investment firm linked to the United Arab Emirates that also put huge amounts into Trump\u2019s company at the same time as the UAE tried to get advanced computer chips made by US companies, something that had been stopped by Biden.<\/p>\n It was later approved, a link called \u201cextraordinary\u201d by some, but Oliver joked that the word he would use would lead to \u201ca few million in legal fees\u201d.<\/p>\n About 49% of money put into the company is from a UAE royal referred to as the \u201cspy sheikh\u201d which \u201csounds like the title of a culturally insensitive 90s thriller starring Steven Seagal\u201d.<\/p>\n After HBO\u2019s legal team reached out to the White House, an email claimed Trump \u201conly acts in the best interests of the American public\u201d, which Oliver said was \u201chuge for this country if true\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump has claimed he doesn\u2019t know details as his sons handle the business and Oliver said \u201cin most cases I am willing to believe that Trump doesn\u2019t talk to his sons,\u201d especially given that his \u201cwedding present to Don Jr was to not show up\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet Oliver added that \u201cit is really hard for me to believe that Trump is unaware\u201d, given how the company is \u201cexploiting crypto sketchiness for maximum profit\u201d and \u201cmaking it much easier for others to do the same\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump promised to fire the head of the SEC who was seen as being too hard on crypto, which led to huge cheers from the audience at a bitcoin conference.<\/p>\n Gary Gensler, the former SEC chair, stepped down on Trump\u2019s first day back in office and a more pro-crypto replacement \u2013 Paul Atkins \u2013 was hired, which has led to 60% of related cases being eased up.<\/p>\n Trump has tried to \u201clock in that lax regulatory environment for the foreseeable future\u201d, Oliver said, moving it out of the purview of the SEC to a small agency with limited enforcement capacity.<\/p>\n These \u201cchanges could be hard to undo\u201d with a proposed Clarity Act, a cryptocurrency regulatory measure that has faced Democratic opposition, being pushed by Trump that \u201cshould be worrying you\u201d.<\/p>\n Oliver said Trump looks \u201cflagrantly corrupt and compromised\u201d and any further mention of his crypto dealings should imply that \u201csome shady shit is likely going down\u201d.<\/p>\n This article was amended on 28 July 2026. An earlier version incorrectly said Donald Trump promised to hire former SEC chair Gary Gensler when he actually vowed to fire him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Oliver took aim at Donald Trump and his family\u2019s various crypto schemes on his return to Last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-547883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}