Abstract
Many Americans are worrying about whether they will soon be living in a postdemocracy autocracy. But in the meantime, they may already be living in a crypto-fueled kleptocracy. Less than one year into his second presidential term, Donald Trump has reportedly taken his wealth to new heights by embracing, both as a businessman and a politician, the crypto industry. Trump’s family businesses are involved in minting Trump-themed meme coins, creating America- themed stablecoins, and mining crypto assets—so successfully that most of Trump’s wealth is likely now from crypto, not real estate. All the while, the Trump Administration is rolling back crypto regulations, abandoning ongoing crypto prosecutions, and pardoning crypto criminals.
But this Essay is ultimately not about Trump. Crypto creates new channels for public corruption that operate on autopilot, generating wealth without transactions, contracts, or promises for the law to easily pin down, prevent, or punish. Future politicians looking to convert public trust into private fortune need only follow this new playbook: Adoption is cheap, monitoring is hard, and payouts can be tremendous. President Trump’s second term makes vivid the potential for abuse, but the dangers won’t end there. If the United States fails to adapt, we risk entrenching a twenty-first-century kleptocracy in which the boundary between political power and personal enrichment is no longer blurred—it is erased.
Recommended Citation
W. R. Thomas & Jeffery Y. Zhang,
Crypto Kleptocracy,
124
Mich. L. Rev. Online
84
(2026).
Available at:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr_online/vol124/iss1/5