President Trump made big news this week by revealing how much income he’s personally made in his second term. The total number is $2.2 billion in 2025, according to White House disclosures, with roughly $1.4 billion of it coming from crypto assets. The unusual thing, several top economists, legal scholars and corporate governance experts told Fortune, is that this fits into a decades-old corner of economics: “big player theory.”
“I think we’re in a new era,” Steve Hanke, the so-called “Money Doctor” told Fortune. The Johns Hopkins economist, a veteran advisor on monetary policy to several administrations (including the Trump White House), told Fortune that when he saw the big income disclosure, he immediately flashed onto “the economics of big players.”
