The Grift that Keeps Giving
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Trump Rolls Out His New Cryptocurrency Business
In a livestream, Donald Trump formally introduced World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture led by two digital currency entrepreneurs with little experience running high-profile businesses.
As expected, World Liberty Financial, the new cryptocurrency thing touted yesterday by Donald Trump on various livestreams, seems pretty perfect. As does this write-up by David Yaffe-Bellany, Sharon LaFraniere, and Matthew Goldstein about the venture, from the opening line forward, it needs almost no commentary beyond the excerpts:
A day after an apparent assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump, he appeared on a livestream on Monday to champion his latest business venture: cryptocurrencies.
What an intro. What an absolutely insane time to be alive. Truly.
“Crypto is one of those things we have to do,” Mr. Trump said on X. “Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.”
Yeah I mean obviously.
Beside him were his collaborators, including a family friend; Mr. Trump’s two oldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump; and two little-known crypto entrepreneurs with no experience running a high-profile business. Together, they were rolling out Mr. Trump’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, a project that has already raised concerns about the former president’s conflicts of interest and even alarmed some of his most vocal supporters in the industry.
Mr. Trump has promoted the venture since August, but its exact purpose remains unclear. No official launch date has been set. On the livestream, he did not address the project directly, leaving the details to the two entrepreneurs, Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman. Mr. Herro has described himself as “the dirtbag of the internet,” while Mr. Folkman used to teach classes on how to seduce women.
No notes.
For years, Mr. Trump was a crypto skeptic who denounced Bitcoin as a “scam.” But on the campaign trail, he has morphed into a vocal supporter, speaking at a popular industry conference and drawing donations from crypto executives.
Shocking.
On the livestream on Monday, Mr. Trump and his sons said that crypto would transform the financial system, without detailing what their business venture is designed to accomplish. But privately, some people involved in World Liberty Financial have pitched it as a borrowing and lending platform, according to three people with knowledge of the project. A white paper for the venture, reviewed by The New York Times, said that it would feature a new cryptocurrency called $WLFI that would be sold to the public.
What could possibly go wrong?
Several members of the Trump family have roles in the business, according to a list of team members included in the white paper. Mr. Trump’s title is “chief crypto advocate.” Barron Trump, his 18-year-old son, is listed as the project’s “DeFi visionary,” a reference to the branch of crypto known as decentralized finance. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are each described as a “web3 ambassador.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Behind the scenes, Steve Witkoff has taken a hands-on role, according to a person familiar with the planning. He envisioned the project partly as a way to give Barron Trump some experience with entrepreneurship, the person said, and steer him away from memecoins, a scam-ridden segment of the crypto industry. A spokesman for Mr. Witkoff declined to comment.
Barron Trump did not participate in the livestream, but the former president described him as a crypto enthusiast. “He’s got four wallets or something,” Mr. Trump said. “He knows this stuff inside out.”
This would seem to be the real backstory behind the whole endeavor.
Mr. Herro is a relatively obscure figure in the crypto world. As a young man, he has said, he was a habitual drug offender and was imprisoned, but later turned his life around and became rich. In 2022, he appeared at a crypto seminar hosted by Jordan Belfort, who inspired the 2013 movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.” At the event, Mr. Herro described stablecoins as “the biggest innovation since sliced bread,” and said his favorite of the coins was “vivacious and insane and almost borderline a Ponzi scheme.”
What could possibly go wrong?
On the livestream, Mr. Folkman said that lawyers were in the room with him, “staring daggers at me.” Because of the government crackdown on crypto, he explained, the digital currency associated with World Liberty Financial would be available in the United States only to accredited investors.
“The lawyers are getting nervous back there,” he said. “They’re sweating.”
NGMI.