Break it Down: HyTerra discovers a Kansas helium high
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
Trump inflates wealth with $930 million move
President Donald Trump has added at least $620 million ($A930m) to his fortune in a matter of months through a series of cryptocurrency ventures, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — a dramatic and fast-moving shift in how the president and his family are generating wealth. While Trump's overall net worth has remained relatively stable — $6.5 billion ($A9.75b) on Election Day and $6.4 billion ($A9.6b) now — Bloomberg's analysis shows that digital assets and crypto-linked ventures have rapidly become the most lucrative part of his portfolio. Much of that comes from World Liberty Financial, a blockchain platform that issues its own token and a stablecoin called USD1. Bloomberg estimates that $390 million ($A585m) of the $550 million ($A825m) in token sales has gone to the Trump family, who also hold 22.5 billion World Liberty-branded tokens. Although those tokens are excluded from Trump's net worth calculation due to current transfer restrictions, their market value in June exceeded $2 billion ($A3b). The family recently reduced its stake in World Liberty from 60 per cent to 40 per cent. The crypto haul 'dwarfs the more than $34 million the Trump Organization reported taking in from real estate licensing deals last year,' Bloomberg reported. 'I am incredibly proud of our wonderful company. We have never been stronger,' Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, told the outlet. One of the highest-profile events linked to Trump's digital asset push was the creation of a memecoin under the president's name that was launched during his inauguration weekend. The Trump Organization and affiliate CIC Digital collectively hold 80 per cent of the token supply. Trump's stake in the memecoin — after liquidity discounts and trading revenue — is worth around $150 million, ($A225m) Bloomberg reported. An additional 800 million coins, worth over $7 billion ($A10.5b) are set to vest over three years beginning this month, but are not included in Bloomberg's wealth estimate. Meanwhile, the Trump family's largest real estate windfall in years came in January, when Trump National Doral won approval to build 1,500 luxury condos. That pushed the valuation of the 600-acre Miami-area golf resort from $350 million ($A525m) to $1.5 billion ($A2.25b), Bloomberg calculated. Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., the parent of Truth Social, has also significantly impacted Trump's balance sheet. The company, which reported a $401 million net loss ($A601.5m) in 2023, briefly added $4 billion ($A6b) to Trump's net worth in October. Today, Bloomberg values his stake at $2 billion ($A3b). The company is now pivoting to finance and Bitcoin. The Trump family's crypto-related business continues to expand. American Bitcoin — a spin-off from a Trump-aligned investment bank — plans to go public in a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining Inc., a Nasdaq-listed penny stock. Hut 8 Corp., a Bitcoin miner, transferred most of its mining equipment to American Bitcoin in exchange for a majority stake. The Trumps and their partners own 20 per cent of the business, which Bloomberg says is now valued at over $3 billion ($A4.5b), despite its main asset having a book value of just $120 million ($A180m). The stablecoin USD1, issued by World Liberty, received a boost when Abu Dhabi-based MGX said it used the token to make a $2 billion ($A3b) investment in crypto exchange Binance. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao — who pled guilty to US anti-money laundering violations and is reportedly seeking a pardon — is listed as an adviser to World Liberty, along with Sun and Bilal Bin Saqib, who chairs Pakistan's Crypto Council. Applying Circle Internet Group's market cap-to-circulation ratio for USDC implies World Liberty could be worth $1.4 billion ($A2.1b), Bloomberg said, although the stablecoin was excluded from Trump's net worth due to limited adoption. Another sign of the Trumps' deepening crypto ties is Eric Trump's recent announcement that World Liberty Financial will acquire a 'substantial position' in the Trump memecoin for its digital asset reserves. Yet not all of the family's ventures are fully visible. Bloomberg noted that several private efforts — including the members-only club Executive Branch in Washington, DC, and links to companies such as Metaplanet, Kalsh and BlinkRX — were not included in Trump's net worth due to opaque financial disclosures. Trump's crypto gains are also reflected in official financial filings. His June 2025 disclosure lists more than $600 million ($A900m) in income from crypto-related activity and merchandise sales through the end of 2024. The figures include $57.35 million ($A86.03m) from token sales at World Liberty Financial; $320 million ($A480m) in fees generated by the Trump memecoin (though it's unclear how much went directly to Trump-controlled entities); over $400 million ($A600m) in decentralised finance activity involving World Liberty Financial and affiliated projects; and $1.16 million ($A1.74) from NFT and digital card sales. Forbes last month estimated that Trump's total crypto-related gains could reach up to $1 billion ($A1.5b), accounting for all token sales, fees, and future distributions. That figure includes both realised and unrealised gains and assumes Trump retains a large portion of proceeds from his various ventures. The Post has sought comment from the White House and the Trump Organization.
News.com.au
8 hours ago
- News.com.au
US House sets make-or-break final vote on Trump tax bill
US lawmakers teed up a final vote on Donald Trump's marquee tax and spending bill for early Thursday after a bruising day of Republican infighting that threatened to derail the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda. Trump is seeking a green light in the House of Representatives for his Senate-passed "One Big Beautiful Bill" -- but faces opposition on all sides of his fractious party over provisions set to balloon the national debt while launching a historic assault on the social safety net. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson spent much of Wednesday struggling to corral his rank-and-file members as the package scraped through a series of "test" votes that laid bare deep divisions in the party. It was set for a final vote to advance it from Congress to Trump's desk around 8:30 am (1230 GMT) after passing its last procedural hurdle in the early hours. "We feel very good about where we are and we're moving forward," an upbeat Johnson told reporters at the Capitol. "So we're going to deliver the Big, Beautiful Bill -- the president's 'America First' agenda -- and we're going to do right by the American people." Originally approved by the House in May, Trump's sprawling legislation squeezed through the Senate on Tuesday by a solitary vote but had to return to the lower chamber for a rubber stamp of the senators' revisions. The package honors many of Trump's campaign promises, boosting military spending, funding a mass migrant deportation drive and committing $4.5 trillion to extend his first-term tax relief. But it is expected to pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the country's fast-growing deficits, while shrinking the federal food stamps program and forcing through the largest cuts to the Medicaid health insurance scheme for low-income Americans since its 1960s launch. While moderates in the House are anxious that the cuts will damage their prospects of reelection, fiscal hawks are chafing over savings that they say fall far short of what was promised. Johnson has to negotiate incredibly tight margins, and can likely only lose three lawmakers in the final vote, among more than two dozen who have declared themselves open to rejecting Trump's bill. - 'Abomination' - Republican leaders had been hoping to spend just a few hours on Wednesday afternoon approving the package, although they had some breathing room ahead of Trump's self-imposed Independence Day deadline on Friday. The 887-page text only passed in the Senate after a flurry of tweaks that pulled the House-passed version further to the right. Republicans lost one conservative who was angry about adding to the country's $37 trillion debt burden and two moderates worried about plans for around $1 trillion in health care cuts. Some estimates put the total number of recipients set to lose their health insurance under the bill at 17 million, while scores of rural hospitals are expected to close. Legislation in the House has to go through multiple preliminary votes before it can come up for final approval, and a majority of lawmakers must wave it through at each of these stages. But there were warning signs early on as the package stumbled at one of its first procedural steps, with a vote that ought to have been straightforward remaining open for seven hours and 31 minutes -- making it the longest in House history. Johnson had been clear that he was banking on Trump leaning on waverers, as the president has in the past to turn around contentious House votes that were headed for failure. The Republican leader has spent weeks hitting the phones and hosting White House meetings to cajole lawmakers torn between angering welfare recipients at home and incurring his wrath. "FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!" Trump thundered in one of multiple posts to his Truth Social platform that sounded increasingly frustrated as Wednesday's marathon voting session spilled into Thursday. The minority House Democrats have signaled that they plan to campaign on the bill to flip the chamber in the 2026 midterm elections, pointing to analyses showing that it represents a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest.
ABC News
8 hours ago
- ABC News
Blackrock betting big on the US despite 'tariff D-Day' uncertainty
Blackrock's chief investment strategist Ben Powell says investors should expect more dynamism in the market and more significant news flow in and around trade over the next several weeks.
