Among the 67 billionaires known to own property in Palm Beach, President Donald Trump can count himself among the big winners on the latest Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people.
Trump saw his fortune more than double since the 2024 list was released about a year ago. The president’s estimated net worth jumped from $2.3 billion to $5.1 billion in the rankings released April 1, based on a snapshot of his wealth taken in early March. He was tied in 700th place among the world’s 3,028 billionaires, according to Forbes.
Trump’s latest jump in wealth was the biggest he had seen in years. During the past decade, Trump saw his estimated net worth rise only four times on the annual Forbes lists that track the wealth of the world’s richest. His estimated fortune dropped six times on those lists — and remained unchanged on only one, in 2019, during his first term in the White House.
On all of the lists of the last decade except the current one, Trump’s fortune never rose above $4.5 billion, the estimate published in 2016.
Trump, who bought his Mar-a-Lago estate in 1985, is among at least 67 billionaires with strong residential ties to Palm Beach, according to a Palm Beach Daily News analysis of the latest Forbes data. (Read about all the Palm Beach billionaires here.)
Forbes Senior Editor Dan Alexander, in a story about Trump accompanying the new list, attributed much of the boost in the president’s wealth to the $2.6 billion he accrued in shares after “he took his social media venture, Truth Social’s parent company, public” on March 25, 2024.
More money flowed in when Trump — working with his sons Eric, Don Jr. and Barron — began selling what Alexander dubbed “Trumpified crypto” in his article.
“He started in Octoberwith a (cryptocurrency) project named World Liberty Financial that targeted crypto newbies with tokens that cannot be resold and vague promises of a ‘financial revolution,'” Alexander wrote.
Trump’s crypto project took off after his Nov. 5 election, Alexander’s article said, when more investors took the crypto plunge, “spurred by a whiff of deregulation and $75 million of purchases from crypto hypester Justin Sun.” The result was a windfall for Trump estimated at $390 million, “or roughly $245 million after tax,” Alexander wrote.
Here’s a summary of the president’s estimated net worth, as published in the Forbes world’s billionaires lists, beginning In 2015, when it was $4.1 billion. In 2016, it was $4.5 billion; in 2017, $3.5 billion; in 2018 and 2019, $3.1 billion; in 2020, $2.1 billion; in 2021, $2.4 billion; in 2022, $3 billion; in 2023, $2.5 billion; in 2024, $2.3 billion; and in 2025, $5.1 billion.
Forbes based its 2025 estimates of the wealth of the world’s billionaires on financial and other data collected on March 7. Forbes.com updates the list in real time, based on a variety of factors contributing to the billionaires’ net worth, including stocks and other assets such as privately held companies, real estate and art. As a result, the list provides a single-day snapshot of the billionaires’ wealth. See the complete list at Forbes.com.
Trump’s estimated net worth in 2021 was particularly noteworthy. That’s because for the first time in 25 years, his wealth that year wasn’t big enough to earn him a spot on another Forbes list of billionaires — the famous Forbes 400. Trump’s estimated $2.5 billion fortune — recorded by Forbes on Sept. 3, 2021 — focused largely on the value of his real-estate developments and didn’t hit the $2.9 billion threshold for the annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.
By 2002, however, Trump was back on the Forbes 400, but he fell off again the next year, when his net worth was estimated on Sept. 8, 2023, to be $2.6 billion, which fell short of the list’s $2.9 billion entry point.
Trump returned to the Forbes 400 list last year with an estimated fortune of $4.3 billion as of Sept. 1, 2024, when the list’s threshold was $3.3 billion.
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call (561) 820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump’s wealth more than doubles on new Forbes list, which has 67 Palm Beach billionaires
Reporting by Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
