On a sweltering mid-August day in New York City, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. swung open the doors to a boardroom at the Trump Organization. The two sons of President Donald Trump sat around a polished black stone table on the 25th floor of Trump Tower. In between them sat Zach Witkoff, the son of real estate magnate Steve Witkoff, who is serving as Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East.
They had assembled for a rare media interview. Alongside other advisors and executives, the trio wanted to promote World Liberty Financial, the company at the center of the Trump family’s lucrative crypto business, and its latest $1.5 billion deal. But first they had to rag on each other.
“He’s a man that I look up to,” Witkoff said of the 47th president. “He’s a man that I’ve named my first son, Don, after.”
Donald Jr. responded with mock outrage. “Wait, I thought it was … ,” he said, trailing off, implying that he thought it was himself, not his father, who had inspired Witkoff’s name choice.
The banter continued as Chase Herro, a cofounder of the Trump family’s crypto business, weighed in with feigned sympathy: “It’s terrible that that’s how you find that out—in an interview.”
Jokes aside, the Trump sons, Witkoff, Herro, and his business partner Zak Folkman occupy big shoes as leaders of the Trump family’s crypto brain trust. Their job is to build out World Liberty Financial, which launched in October 2024, into a crypto behemoth—despite a deluge of apparent conflicts of interest.
As of now, World Liberty Financial has three main ventures: a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar called USD1, a cryptocurrency called WLFI, and a publicly traded company that holds WLFI. Those who purchase WLFI can help make future decisions about the development of World Liberty Financial products. The public company, meanwhile, was created by partnering with a onetime biotech firm, and exists primarily as a way for traditional investors who don’t use crypto exchanges to gain exposure to WLFI by buying shares.
The whole enterprise is a hit-spinning mix of tokens and financial alchemy. It’s also printing cash. World Liberty Financial announced in March that it had raised $550 million through direct sales of the WLFI token, while its USD1 stablecoin has reached a market capitalization of $2.2 billion—a pool of capital on which the Trump family business earns interest. Then there was the deal with the former biotech company, which resulted in investors raising another $1.5 billion to purchase WLFI tokens, a price that valued the overall token supply at a reported $20 billion.
Eric and Donald Jr. relayed details of these ventures in the spacious 25th-floor boardroom overlooking Central Park. They have clearly become fluent in crypto, slinging around references to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and payment rails. More striking, though, was the sight of the polished Eric and Donald Jr. side-by-side with tattooed crypto natives.
Eric and Donald Jr., along with Witkoff, wore suits and blue ties. Then there was Herro, the crypto venture’s cofounder, who sported a light beige T-shirt and olive jeans, with what appeared to be a Greek statue inked on his right bicep and plenty of other tattoos. Folkman, wearing a black long sleeve shirt and sleek sweatpants, was likewise tatted up with an ink butterfly gracing his left hand along with other marks. World Liberty Financial, it seems, favors two uniforms: business formal or crypto leisure.
‘A little different than us’
The details of how the Trumps teamed up with a group of crypto veterans are still fuzzy, but the story begins on a golf course.
About two years ago, in the summer of 2023, Herro, a longtime crypto entrepreneur who once described himself as a “dirtbag of the internet,” scored an invite to the Shell Bay Club outside of Miami, a private golf club owned by the Witkoffs. Herro wouldn’t say who invited him but described his host as “a great young man” and friend of Donald Jr.
While Herro, clad in tattoos, was on the green, Zach Witkoff happened to be driving by. “He could tell I was a little, like, out of my realm,” said Herro. “And he’s like, ‘Listen, you come ride with me.’ And literally, on the golf cart, we just started shooting the shit.”
The chance meeting blossomed into business ties. The Witkoffs introduced Herro and his longtime business partner Zak Folkman, who once ran a company called Date Hotter Girls, to the Trumps. And then the two families teamed up with Herro and Folkman, whom the moderator of a September livestream described as “two crypto punks” while announcing the venture.
During the same livestream, Zach’s father, Steve Witkoff, sought to reassure the audience, urging them not to judge this book by its cover.
“They look a little different than us. They dress a little different than us,” he said. “I met traders from all over the world, and these guys are as smart as any currency traders I’ve ever met.”
Any unease over the contrasting sartorial standards of Trump-world and the crypto punks has, however, disappeared amid a rush of flourishing new business ventures. The Trumps and Witkoff brag that their stablecoin, USD1, is the “fastest-growing stablecoin ever.” That may be true, though more than 90% of the stablecoin’s market cap was the result of a mammoth deal with the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance. That deal entailed Binance receiving a $2 billion investment from an Abu Dhabi venture firm, and taking the payment in USD1. Zach Witkoff announced the deal on May 1, and Binance has yet to convert the USD1, meaning World Liberty Financial continues to earn interest on the proceeds.
Now, the Trump family crypto venture, which numbers between 20 and 30 employees, has its sights on the launch of a crypto lending and borrowing protocol and an app for decentralized finance, or what those in crypto call DeFi. Folkman declined to say when those products would launch.
The rush of capital and Trump-branded crypto products has raised alarm bells among ethics experts, who argue that World Liberty Financial gives would-be seekers of presidential favor a direct line to his family’s pocketbook. When asked previously about the ethical quagmires, Eric Trump dismissed them. “I keep separation between the two,” he said, referring to his business relationships and relationship with his father. “But I think he’d be proud of what we were doing.”
Zach Witkoff, Herro, and Folkman are also proud of their crypto company. On the back of Herro’s neck is a tattoo of World Liberty Financial’s logo, a geometric eagle. Folkman had a similar tattoo on his left forearm. And Witkoff admitted he, too, had the tattoo. Apparently, it stemmed from a night out on the town, according to Matt Morgan, an advisor to the Trump family crypto project who was also in the boardroom.
When asked where his tattoo was, Witkoff was cagey. “He may or may not have a tramp stamp!” wisecracked Folkman, referring to a tattoo just above one’s backside.
