For months, former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump has flirted with crypto, from speaking at the annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville to dropping hints on social media about a new project. On Monday night, he finally embraced the sector on a live Spaces on X, with the formal announcement of World Liberty Financial, a so-called “decentralized finance” initiative centered around a crypto token called WLFI.
While the details of World Liberty are still hazy, the two-hour-plus Spaces confirmed key aspects, including the involvement of little-known entrepreneurs such as Chase Herro, who has described himself as the ‘Dirtbag of the Internet,’ the central role of Trump’s sons, including New York University student Barron, and specific provisions around insider governance, which has been criticized among crypto advocates.
With the presidential election less than two months ago, Trump’s new blockchain gambit could provide a new source of funding—but also create potential conflicts of interest, Democrats warn. Here’s what you need to know about the project.
How did Trump get into crypto?
Trump’s interest in crypto began in 2022, when he debuted an NFT trading card collection that sold out within a day, garnering nearly $5 million in sales. Though the former president had previously expressed skepticism of digital assets like Bitcoin, describing it as a “scam” and allowing regulators to take a hard stance against blockchain, the success of the NFTs appeared to soften his position.
As crypto focused Super PACs emerged as some of the top campaign fundraisers in 2024, Trump courted blockchain entrepreneurs, even headlining the Bitcoin conference in Nashville in July.
The hints around World Liberty Financial began in August, when Trump and his sons posted about a new crypto project on his social media platform Truth Social that would target unbanked and underserved communities. They also launched a Telegram channel, with ties emerging between entrepreneurs with loose connections to crypto, including real estate developer Steve Witkoff and Herro.
Who can buy the token and when does it launch?
More details emerged in Monday’s Spaces, though Trump himself did not directly address the project during his brief remarks. World Liberty Financial will include a so-called governance token (crypto’s version of voting shares) called WLFI, which will be nontransferable and will not earn yield—two factors that would seem to make it an unattractive investment opportunity.
Moreover, the token will only be available to accredited investors, which seems contrary to the project’s apparent mission of helping the underserved obtain loans. By only making the token available to accredited investors (those with a net worth over $1 million), the project will likely be able to qualify for a key SEC exemption that allows companies to issue unregistered securities.
The hosts of the X Space did not provide any specifics about the launch of the project, though they did share more details on allocation, saying that 63% of the token would be sold to the public, with just 20% going to the team.
What are concerns about the project?
As Coindesk previously reported, much of the language in the leaked white paper appears similar to Dough Finance, another DeFi app that was hacked over the summer. Security does not remain the only concern for the Trump family’s crypto gamble, however.
Just as Trump became enmeshed in other conflict-of-interest critiques during his first term in office related to his sprawling web of businesses, such as hotels and resorts, the launch of a new crypto token could raise questions about people buying into the project to earn influence, or Trump pushing on regulators to greenlight his personal businesses, especially as agencies such as the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission target similar crypto companies with enforcement actions.
For now, World Liberty Financial remains just another sign that the blockchain industry is one of the most powerful factors in the 2024 election. “Crypto’s just one of those things we have to do, whether we like it or not,” Trump said on Monday.
