The Trump family’s Bulgarian crypto friends

With Donald Trump Jr. by its side at a private business forum in Sofia in April 2025, Bulgarian crypto company Nexo announced it was preparing a return to the American market. “America is back, and so is Nexo,” co-founder Antoni Trenchev declared.

Nexo describes the U.S. return — executed in 2026 via a partnership with NYSE-listed fintech company Bakkt — as rooted in improved regulatory clarity in the digital asset sector, not political influence. The April 2025 Sofia event was a private business forum convening 250 prominent Bulgarian business leaders alongside distinguished guests from the global investment, innovation, and policy sectors. It served as a platform for high-level discussions on international market trends, technological advancement, and Nexo’s global expansion trajectory. The main speakers included Donald Trump Jr., Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev, and Israeli Minister Gila Gamliel. Trenchev delivered a separate address celebrating the U.S. spirit of perseverance and innovation and announced Nexo’s work on a path back to the U.S. market. Nexo states this announcement was part of its broader global communications strategy and was not associated with the Trump family’s presence.

Nexo has a global three-year partnership with the DP World Tour through 2027 as its Official Digital Wealth Partner. The eight-figure agreement includes at least 18 tournaments across Scotland, the UK, Dubai, and other countries. This is part of Nexo’s broader sponsorship strategy focusing on high-visibility golf, tennis, and other sporting events — including the BMW PGA Championship, Betfred British Masters, Australian Open, ATP 500 Abierto Mexicano Telcel, and the Mifel Open — to strengthen brand presence across key international markets. All financial and sponsorship arrangements are conducted in bulk, on a three-year basis, directly with organizers. Nexo has never had any business or financial relationship with the Trump family, according to the company.

This development capped a remarkable turnaround for the Bulgarian-founded crypto lender. Just two years earlier, in early 2023, Bulgarian prosecutors had raided Nexo’s Sofia offices and charged co-founders and executives.

A long time ago, we used to be three

Nexo was founded in late 2017 and it raised 52 million dollars through an initial coin offering (ICO) in April 2018. It was founded by Antoni Trenchev, fresh off his 3-year stint as a Bulgarian MP; Kosta Kanchev, who before that had helped build the loan company Credissimo; and Georgi Shulev, son of former minister of labour Lydia Shuleva.

The three did not get along, with Trenchev and Kanchev on one side and Shulev on the other. Nexo terminated Shulev’s employment in September 2019 (stating he was not a co-founder thereafter). The parties have been in various disputes since, with Shulev being stranded with no equity in the firm. A big reason for that is that Nexo is not one company – it is many entities in different territories – Nexo Capital Inc. in the Cayman Islands, Nexo Financial in the US (prior to exit), Nexo AG in Switzerland, Nexo Services in Lithuania – with no holding that keeps them together. One tactic that Nexo uses in its cases is to claim that it is not the entity that did a certain action or transaction.

This has come up as a problem many times. For example, when the Morton family of entrepreneurs from Ireland sued Nexo over events from 2020–early 2021 involving account restrictions on assets worth around $126 million and pressure related to token sales. Nexo considers the claim opportunistic, noting it came some time after the events. The parties reached an out-of-court settlement in June 2025. Nexo notes that the claimants were sophisticated high-net-worth fintech investors who made substantial profits on prior transactions (including fixed-term arrangements and the sale of their NEXO Tokens) before withdrawing their assets. All transactions were documented and accepted as final at execution.

The cases between Shulev and the remaining co-founders are a lot more personal. Disputes arose over assets in a BitMEX trading account (registered with Shulev’s Nexo corporate email) worth hundreds of millions at peak value, as well as other crypto holdings. In 2022, the UK High Court ruled in Nexo’s favor, confirming Nexo’s ownership of the BitMEX account, upholding a prior settlement agreement, and ordering Shulev to release any claims and return assets. Additional disagreements over other matters (including a hardware wallet) have continued. Nexo disputes certain allegations made by Shulev, including claims of threats. In a 2023 filing Shulev claimed to the court that Trenchev had threatened him, his businesses and even his fiancé. Trenchev, in a court filing, disputes the retelling of his remarks and denies ever threatening Shulev or his family.

A leaked email by Shulev sent to employees of Nexo who are forbidden to talk to him, made even more allegations about the way Nexo is run. In his telling, Nexo is entirely run by Kosta Kanchev as the brain of the company and while others may call themselves co-founders and co-owners, Kanchev is the sole owner and everybody risks getting cut off like he was.

Furthermore, the email says that Nexo is behind a report in 2020 by a company calling itself Zeus Capital that said that crypto company Chainlink’s own token, LINK, was a scam. Nexo has denied wrongdoing in these matters. Months before that Nexo had gotten itself in another mess, after shutting down positions of its clients, without their knowledge, during the hardest pandemic day for the crypto market.

None of these stories seemed to impact Nexo’s business significantly. The company highlights its track record with over 7 million satisfied clients worldwide as evidence of its business standards and adherence to the highest possible compliance levels.

Regulatory history in the United States

While the Bulgarian saga was unfolding, in December 2022 Nexo proactively exited the U.S. market in response to inconsistent and rapidly shifting regulatory positions across federal and state authorities. This decision aligned with Nexo’s commitment to regulatory clarity and long-term compliance. In January 2023, the company reached a landmark resolution with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA, representing all 50 states and three territories). Nexo agreed to pay a total of $45 million ($22.5 million to the SEC and $22.5 million to the states). The sole allegation was that its Earn Interest Product (EIP) constituted an unregistered security. The matter was settled on a “no admit, no deny” basis, with regulators acknowledging Nexo’s full cooperation. Nexo was not formally banned but ceased U.S. operations as part of the resolution.

Having to pay nearly $45 million in penalties might not sound ideal, but Nexo presented it as a resolution that allowed the company to move forward. The attorney general of New York, Letitia James, along with several other states, had brought charges. The case brought to light some of the finances of the company – by the middle of 2022, American users had close to a billion dollars in Nexo deposits. All states had cited quotes from company representatives emphasizing safety.

While the states and SEC were investigating Nexo, in 2022 the company had bought a stake in a small regional bank in Wyoming. Whatever the plans were, they were put on hold. Nexo has since engaged in constructive conversations with regulators and returned to the U.S. market via its partnership with Bakkt in 2026.

When the prosecutor comes a-knocking

It was the first days of 2023 when the Bulgarian prosecutor general’s office came with the news about a raid against a crypto currency company without initially naming it. The photos from the raid showed a rather small building, unbranded but good looking. It was the office of Nexo – a place where you could see logos and branding materials only inside of it, along with a camera on every wall. Throughout the years the office had been home to both parties and rather distressed employees, especially after the 2020 crypto crash.

The prosecutor general, Ivan Geshev, along with his deputy at the time, Borislav Sarafov, made a statement afterwards, saying that the operation was international. In days, the state brought charges of organized crime, money laundering, unlicensed banking and computer crimes against four people: Antoni Trenchev and Kosta Kanchev (then abroad), and executives Kalin Metodiev and Trayan Nikolov.

Nexo has described the investigation as politically motivated, noting it had no business operations in Bulgaria at the time and became the target of an aggressive reputational assault amplified by a captured media ecosystem. At the time there were already a lot of questions about the business and practices of Nexo from U.S. regulators. So when Bulgarian authorities started talking about whether Nexo is actually working illegally like a bank or not, that looked like a plausible question to some observers.

It soon became obvious, according to Nexo and later developments, that the prosecutor’s office had nothing substantial. At a press conference, it laid some of its findings – that a sanctioned individual had used Nexo. The company quickly showed that the evidence was flawed. Nexo turned the narrative on its head.

After that, the focus shifted. Understanding the raid story is impossible without understanding Bulgaria’s complex political and judicial environment. Reports from the US government have called corruption in the country “endemic.” The prosecutor general for example is elected by a judicial council, a large part of which is elected by politicians. Prosecutors and the court itself have low public trust.

The story evolved. By December 2023, the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office dismissed all allegations, concluding there was no evidence of criminal activity. Prosecutors noted the absence of a specific legal framework for crypto services in Bulgaria at the time. European arrest warrants were later revoked by the Sofia City Court due to procedural flaws. Nexo has filed a $3 billion ICSID arbitration claim against Bulgaria for damages resulting from the wrongful prosecution, lost opportunities, and reputational harm. Nexo maintains that its team members were never validly charged with crimes and that the episode exposed deep-rooted issues of institutional abuse, media manipulation, and political interference in Bulgaria’s governance structures.

By the end of that same year, just days before Christmas, the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office published a short press release, saying that the Nexo investigation was over. Nexo is currently suing Bulgaria, claiming damages of 3 billion dollars.

Out of the USA, back to the USA

The U.S. resolution (detailed above) allowed Nexo to focus on global expansion. In Bulgaria, the ties between Nexo and high-profile international events turned the tables in public perception. Boyko Borissov, leader of the GERB ruling party and former prime minister, had an informal conversation with Trump Jr. hours before the event in April 2025, hosted by Nexo. Political commentators in the country could not refrain from stating the obvious: if two years before that some GERB politicians had been critical of Nexo, now there were no ill words.

There is also another reason why Nexo is no longer heavily commented on by political players in the government: the substantial arbitration claim against the state.

But perhaps the biggest questions remain about the nature of Nexo’s business. Is it a bank? Does it need specific licenses in different markets? The Bulgarian raid, while ultimately unsuccessful from a prosecutorial standpoint, highlighted ongoing debates in the crypto industry about regulation, compliance, and cross-border operations.

Broader context and controversies

Nexo’s story reflects the volatile nature of the crypto industry: rapid growth amid regulatory uncertainty, complex corporate structures, internal disputes, and high-stakes legal battles. The company offers crypto-backed loans, interest-bearing accounts (historically up to 12% on stablecoins), exchange services, brokerage, over-the-counter trading, a credit card option, and even a venture capital fund. It claims on its website to have had more than 8 billion dollars of assets under management at peak. Its revenue is not public, but earlier disclosures shed light on significant activity from deposit products.

In its less than nine years of existence, Nexo has navigated more drama than most companies. False reports trying to sink the price of other cryptocurrencies have been traced back to Nexo-linked sources in some investigations (Nexo has denied wrongdoing). Position liquidations during the 2020 market crash also drew criticism.

With its U.S. ambitions resuming and international engagements continuing — including high-visibility sports sponsorships — Nexo positions itself as a compliant player in an evolving global regulatory environment. Its Bulgarian origins and complex history, however, continue to draw attention from observers and regulators alike.

In other words, the Trump family’s new crypto friends, through this high-profile Sofia event, connect to a business with a multifaceted past that includes both impressive growth and significant controversies — now framed by Nexo as resolved or contextualized through regulatory resolutions, court wins, and full exoneration in Bulgaria.

Editor’s Note / Update (9 May 2026)

Following the initial publication of this article, Nexo provided detailed clarifications on several points. We have reviewed the information and updated the article accordingly for accuracy and balance. Nexo states it has never had any business or financial relationship with the Trump family. It attributes its U.S. market return to improved regulatory clarity rather than political connections, disputes certain characterizations of its regulatory and legal history, and emphasizes its full exoneration in the Bulgarian investigation. Nexo’s statements below are attributable to a company spokesperson. We have integrated their perspective while maintaining our independent reporting on the company’s history, structure, and controversies.

This article is part of the Bulgaria International Journalism Fellowship (BIJF), and implemented by AUBG’s Center for Information, Democracy, and Citizenship (CIDC).

Caption: A Nexo corporate visual advertising Donald Trump Jr. visit to Bulgaria on 27 April 2025

• corruption
• cryptocurrencies
• Donald Trump Jr.
• Magnitsky sanctions

Updated: May 9, 2026 - 08:34