Trump promotes World Liberty Financial despite calling cryptocurrencies a ‘fraud’

During a two-hour livestream on X Spaces, Trump, his sons and their business partner Chase Herro, who once called himself the “scumbag of the internet,” unveiled a new crypto company called World Liberty Financial. Trump's appearance was largely promotional. In his opening remarks, Trump did not speak directly about World Liberty Financial, but instead addressed Sunday's foiled assassination attempt, gave an abbreviated version of his campaign speech and outlined his hopes for the future of cryptocurrency in the U.S.

“If we don't do it, China will,” Trump said. “China is doing it anyway, and if we don't do it, we won't be the biggest, we'll have to be the biggest and the best.”

The Trumps themselves do not own or operate any part of World Liberty Financial, according to BloombergInstead, the project appears to be run by Herro and Zachary Folkman, who used to teach courses on “picking up women.” Herro and Folkman were introduced to Trump's sons through real estate investor Steve Witkoff, he said during the livestream.

The two also earned praise from Donald Trump Jr., who praised their expertise in macroeconomics. “You could put them in a boardroom at Goldman Sachs and they would outshine the people in the room,” he said.

World Liberty Financial is a project in the field of so-called DeFi finance, where users of a platform can lend and borrow cryptocurrencies to others without an institution such as a bank being involved. During the livestream, Donald Trump Jr. spoke about his family's own experience with debanking, the difficulty certain individuals or companies have in obtaining lines of credit from established financial institutions.

“There was a time when the Trumps could have picked up the phone and called any CEO of any bank and gotten a loan from anyone in the world for any low-loan-to-value project and the like. Then we entered the political arena and suddenly that was turned off,” he said.

In a decentralized finance network, individuals can conduct such trades directly with each other, with the transactions recorded on smart contracts stored on the blockchain. Folkman and Herro were previously involved in a DeFi platform called Dough Finance. Dough Finance had previously been hacked, according to reports from . CoinDeskwhich also received a white paper on World Liberty Financial.

As part of the project, World Liberty Financial will launch a new cryptocurrency that will be a non-transferable token that will allow holders to vote on governance matters related to the platform. The token is somewhat similar to the idea of ​​voting shares of a publicly traded company.

World Liberty Financial did not respond to a request for comment sent through X.

Trump's sons have been teasing the project for several weeks. An earlier version of it was called “DeFiant Ones,” a play on the words “DeFi.” In August, Eric Trump hinted at the platform in a post on X. “I've really fallen in love with crypto/DeFi,” he wrote. “Stay tuned for a big announcement…”

I have truly fallen in love with crypto/DeFi. Stay tuned for a big announcement…@Trump @realDonaldTrump @DonaldJTrumpJr

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) 6 August 2024

During the election campaign in recent months, Trump has warmed to cryptocurrencies. At a major Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Trump said he wanted to make the US the “crypto capital of the world.” He himself has dabbled in digital markets with several NFT collections, including one of his mugshots. In July, the Trump campaign raised around $3 million from various donors with ties to the cryptocurrency world. This came just months after he became the first presidential candidate to accept campaign donations in cryptocurrencies.

All of this is in stark contrast to his previous stance. In 2021, the former president called Bitcoin a “fraud against the dollar.”
In Monday's livestream, Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged that he too was a relatively latecomer to cryptocurrency and decentralized finance. But he said his family's recent difficulties in obtaining lines of credit helped him change his mind. “We went from being the elite in this world to being completely excluded, and that changed our perspective so much,” he said. “We understand what so many Americans are going through.”