On the eve of Trump's return to the White House, a new type of political and business cooperation combining power, family interests and cryptocurrency has quietly begun. We will reveal how the Trump family transforms political influence into crypto wealth through World Liberty, impacting the boundaries between presidential power and corporate ethics. This article is derived from the New York Times article "Secret Deals, Foreign Investments, Presidential Policy Changes: The Rise of Trump's Crypto Firm" , which was organized, compiled and rewritten by BitpushNews .
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Just days before Donald Trump was set to take office as US President, a promotional message from "ZMoney" was received on the crypto app Signal .
"ZMoney" is Zachary Folkman, an entrepreneur who once ran the "Date Hotter Girls" company (meaning "Date with Hotter Girls") and now represents Trump and his sons' newly unveiled cryptocurrency company - World Liberty Financial (hereinafter referred to as World Liberty).
Folkman contacted a crypto startup based in the Cayman Islands and proposed a "cooperation": both parties would buy each other's cryptocurrencies to increase public exposure.
But a New York Times investigation found that the deal had a hidden condition: To gain the “privilege” of being associated with the Trump family, the startup would actually have to pay World Liberty millions of dollars in secret fees.
“Everything we do has high visibility and credibility,” Folkman wrote, claiming that other partners have pledged investments of $10 million to $30 million to World Liberty.
The Cayman company rejected the proposal, as did several other companies that received similar "partnership" invitations. Several senior executives said they considered the deal unethical, arguing that World Liberty was essentially "selling" Trump's endorsement and hiding the details of the deal from the public.
But World Liberty's top brass did not back down. They successfully marketed similar deals to other companies and also sold tokens to investors around the world, with cumulative sales exceeding $550 million, most of which will go to the Trump family.
Now that Trump has returned to the White House, he has opened up many new channels for monetizing power - whether it's social media companies or overseas real estate deals. But no Trump family business venture has the potential for conflicts of interest as severe or far-reaching as World Liberty.
The company's major shareholder is the Trump family business, which completely breaks hundreds of years of presidential behavioral norms and interweaves national policy with family business in such a way for the first time in modern American history.
Today, Trump is not only a major player in cryptocurrency, but also the industry's top policymaker. He has appointed a former crypto industry adviser as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) and announced the disbanding of the Justice Department's crypto crimes task force, continuing to weaken Biden-era regulation of the industry.
The New York Times investigated World Liberty's rise from a startup to a global player, and also analyzed how Trump transformed from a crypto skeptic to a crypto advocate, revealing the complex conflicts of interest behind him:
- World Liberty has directly benefited from the official actions of the Trump administration. For example, the president’s announcement of a “federal crypto reserve” that would include a digital currency in which World Liberty has invested briefly boosted the currency’s price.
- World Liberty sold its cryptocurrency to overseas investors, including Israel and Hong Kong, opening a new path for foreign companies to curry favor with Trump.
- Several investors have run companies that have been accused of violating laws by the U.S. government, including one executive whose fraud was halted after he invested millions of dollars in World Liberty.
- World Liberty once proposed "coin-to-coin swaps" to at least five crypto startups and used Trump's name to demand high financial returns. In an industry that already has a poor reputation, such practices have also made industry veterans wary.
“It’s a stain on our industry,” said Andre Cronje, founder of Sonic Labs. He said anyone who accepted the project “would feel like they could make money because it’s a Trump-backed project.”
World Liberty spokesman David Wachsman denied that any of the deals were "one-sided payments for services" but acknowledged that the company does engage in "mutually beneficial investment transactions," calling them "deliberate moves where all parties have a mutual interest."
“The suggestion that the partnership or investment with World Liberty Financial was some kind of political quid pro quo is false, ridiculous and dangerous,” Waxman said, adding: “No investor or partner has ever asked for political favors, nor would we ever consider such a possibility.”
The World Liberty deal did, however, make the Trump family a fortune. According to the company’s website, Trump corporate entities own 60% of World Liberty and are entitled to 75% of the token sale proceeds. These earnings can be converted into cash.
"This is one of the most successful things we've ever done," the president's son, Eric Trump, said in a recent interview at Trump's Doral golf course in Florida.
He and his brother, Donald Trump Jr., are actively involved in the operation of World Liberty, but day-to-day affairs are handled by three partners. Two of them are Folkman and Chase Herro, who have controversial track records in the crypto space. The third is Zach Witkoff, whose father Steve Witkoff is Trump’s special envoy for Middle East affairs and also participated in the founding of World Liberty.
Witkoff, Folkman and Herro recently traveled to Pakistan and met with Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif and other senior officials to discuss World Liberty's business. They rode in limousines, watched dance performances and had police escorts, making the entire event feel like a state visit. (Waxman said U.S. government officials were not involved.)
President Trump has noted that conflict of interest laws do not apply to the president personally and that he has broad immunity for official actions while in office.
"The president's assets are held in a trust managed by his children, so there is no conflict of interest," a spokesman for the president said in a statement. (The trust still benefits Trump himself, however.)
Supporters of World Liberty don’t care about the controversy.
“Trump wants to make a fortune in cryptocurrencies,” said Konstantin Kuznetsov, a Russian citizen living in Miami whose Gibraltar company bought $1 million worth of World Liberty coins. “We also want to take advantage of this wave to make money.”
Chief Encryption Advocate
As a businessman who has worked in the field of tangible assets such as real estate for many years, Trump never intended to build a cryptocurrency empire in the past.
In fact, at the end of his first term, Trump also expressed his disdain for cryptocurrencies through social media. He said they were “not currencies” and their “value is highly volatile and built on castles in the air.”
However, by the last year, his stance had begun to shift.
Since the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021, Trump's family business has been marginalized by the mainstream financial system, and his two sons have become interested in cryptocurrencies.
“We’ve been in real estate, and I’ve been connecting with people all over the world for a long time,” Donald Trump Jr. said last month in a livestream of a crypto conference in Washington. “And then overnight, it became extremely difficult. I quickly realized how much discrimination there is in the traditional financial markets.”
Donald Trump Jr. attended a cryptocurrency summit in Washington last month with Chase Herro, left, Zach Witkoff, center, and Zachary Folkman.
At the meeting, Trump said cryptocurrencies "are the future of our financial system."
The shift in mentality also coincided with a surge in cryptocurrency industry donations to Trump’s campaign. The industry has faced nearly 100 enforcement actions from the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration, so industry executives are eager to find a president who can advocate for them in Washington.
In his campaign speeches, Trump's skepticism about cryptocurrencies has all but disappeared. Last July, he declared at a Bitcoin conference that he wanted to turn the United States into the "global crypto capital."
Two months later, Trump officially "entered the circle" and announced that he and his sons would launch a new crypto project called World Liberty Financial.
He was broadcasting live from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, sitting with Eric and Trump Jr., as well as Herro and Folkman.
“Cryptocurrency is something we have to do,” Trump said. “I have to do it whether you like it or not.”
The additions of Herro and Folkman were quite unexpected.
Folkman, a curly-haired, tattooed man, once ran a company that taught "failed men how to attract women." Herro has shared his "life redemption journey" in multiple podcasts, recounting a time when he was jailed for two weeks in Wisconsin for marijuana possession.
The two worked together for many years, selling intestinal cleansing products and get-rich-quick courses, and later switched to the crypto field, but failed many times.
In 2022, Herro recommended TerraUSD to a group of crypto enthusiasts, calling it "one of the coolest assets in history." But just one month later, the coin plummeted, causing investors to lose billions of dollars. The Dough Finance platform he and Folkman recently founded was hacked in July 2023, resulting in a loss of $2 million.
It is not clear how the two men gained the Trump family's trust. But Steve Witkoff has said he knew them through his son and introduced them to the Trump family.
At World Liberty’s first livestream launch event, Trump Jr. spoke highly of Herro and Folkman.
“You put them in a Goldman Sachs board room and they would crush everybody there,” he said.
In October 2023, Hero and Folkman launched the company's first project - selling a new cryptocurrency called $WLFI, with the goal of raising $300 million.
This is different from Trump's " #meme coin" TRUMP , which was briefly popular and then collapsed.
When $TRUMP was first launched, it surged, but then quickly plummeted, causing investors to lose a total of about $2 billion.
According to World Liberty's promotional materials, the company ultimately plans to develop into a "new type of Internet bank" that allows users to borrow and lend in a variety of digital currencies. Investors holding $WLFI will be able to participate in corporate governance voting like traditional company shareholders.
Trump is at the heart of the whole plan. The company released a 13-page "Gold Paper" document outlining its mission and team structure, with a cover featuring a portrait of Trump that seemed to be splashed with gold paint.
The document states Trump will serve as the company's "Chief Crypto Advocate."
When World Liberty went live, the Trump family and its affiliates received 22.5 billion units of the cryptocurrency—worth at least $1.1 billion on paper based on recent selling prices.
The Trumps and other investors are currently prohibited from selling the tokens on the open market under company rules. However, the company also said that if future buyers agree, the restriction may be lifted.
Initially, the market reaction was lukewarm. By the end of October 2023, the company had sold only $2.7 million in tokens, far below its target.
But the arrival of election day completely changed the situation.
Investors flock to
On November 5, 2024, voting in the U.S. election ended, polling stations in most areas were closed, and Trump was about to win. World Liberty posted a celebratory message on social platform X: "Big things are coming."
Subsequently, a wave of investment poured into World Liberty’s cryptocurrency.
Most cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on the blockchain, and although the identities of buyers and sellers are mostly presented as anonymous addresses, World Liberty said that it conducted strict "know your customer" (KYC) checks on buyers, so it knows who the buyers are.
The New York Times commissioned Nansen, an on-chain data analysis company, to use industry data analysis and found that many investors came from Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, the UAE and other places.
Federal law prohibits foreigners from donating to U.S. presidential campaign or inauguration funds, but by purchasing World Liberty cryptocurrencies, these investors have found a new way to "legally support Trump."
“Our main purpose in buying this token is to support Trump’s inauguration as he is the first crypto-friendly president of the United States,” said Keer Lau, chief strategy officer of Hong Kong-based Orbiter Finance.
Also participating in the investment are the heads of crypto companies who have "stumbled" in front of US regulators. For example, Israeli Yoni Assia, whose U.S. subsidiary of eToro was founded, paid a $1.5 million settlement to the SEC for crypto-related violations.
Another investor is Troy Murray, based in Puerto Rico, who co-founded BarnBridge, which reached a $1.7 million settlement with the SEC in late 2023.
Since Trump took office, some of World Liberty's investors have sought regulatory approval from the government or are preparing to expand their business in the United States, bringing them into conflict with the government.
In March 2024, Asia's company notified the SEC of its plans to go public in the United States. UAE crypto firm DWF Labs announced this month that it had purchased $25 million of $WLFI and would open an office in New York.
“Our exposure in the U.S. has increased significantly as a result of this deal,” Andrei Grachev, managing partner of DWF Labs, said in an interview. “We want to have a direct dialogue with policymakers.”
Of all the investors, the one who may benefit the most is Justin Sun Sun, the billionaire who founded the crypto ecosystem Tron.
Justin Sun once bought a banana taped to the wall at an art auction for $6.2 million. After that, he made a big purchase of $75 million worth of $WLFI.
Eric Trump calls the World Freedom Organization one of his family's most successful ventures.
The move has sparked huge controversy due to the potential overlap of interests between Sun and the Trump administration. During the Biden administration, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Justin Sun, accusing him of manipulating the price of the Tron cryptocurrency.
Sun has denied the allegations. In a newsletter to The New York Times last year, he called the investment in World Liberty "a vote of confidence in the excellent plan of the Trump family."
At the end of February 2024, the SEC asked a federal judge to suspend the trial of Justin Sun case, saying it was "exploring possible settlement options." The judge granted the request.
"A star-studded cast"
Justin Sun’s investment has greatly boosted World Liberty’s momentum. But the Trump family's ambitions go far beyond this.
World Liberty executives subsequently announced a “transformational initiative” that would establish partnerships with other crypto companies and invest in their tokens. “It’s like taking care of your brothers in this world,” Herro said at a crypto conference in New York in February.
But several startups told The New York Times that World Liberty’s public statements were inconsistent with the actual cooperation methods it proposed privately.
According to senior executives of the three companies that were contacted, World Liberty proposed a "coin-to-coin swap" transaction method: startups need to spend $10 million to $30 million to purchase World Liberty's tokens. In exchange, World Liberty will purchase a small amount of the other party's tokens, and the remaining difference will be retained by World Liberty, which is equivalent to a 20% "premium."
World Liberty's investment will be seen by the market as a signal of "Trump's approval," but the public will have no way of knowing that this is a paid endorsement. Previously, industry media Blockworks revealed some details of a similar sales plan.
“They kept saying, ‘We have a great relationship with Trump,’ ” said Mike Silagadze, CEO of Ether.Fi.
Dominik Schiener, founder of the IOTA Foundation, also rejected World Liberty’s proposal: “This approach is extremely dishonest.”
Dominik Schiener, founder of the IOTA Foundation and a 14-year crypto industry veteran, called World Liberty’s actions “dishonest.”
Ondo, a cryptocurrency startup backed by Peter Thiel, helped sponsor the inaugural event, the “Crypto Ball.”
In response, Waxman said that the New York Times report "seriously misunderstands industry practices" and emphasized that such transactions are "extremely common in the blockchain industry" and help establish a "community of interests" among all parties.
“These partnerships create a ‘risk-sharing mechanism’ for all participants,” he said.
Despite the skepticism, World Liberty’s fame has attracted deals with at least five crypto companies, the terms of which were not disclosed.
One example is the US-based Sui Foundation’s announcement that World Liberty will purchase its tokens. Influenced by the news, Sui's price once rose by more than 10%. People familiar with the matter revealed that Sui will also receive World Liberty tokens in exchange.
In addition, World Liberty invested more than $5 million in Portuguese startup Ethena Labs. One of Ethena's investors is Arthur Hayes, who was sentenced to six months of home detention in 2022 for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Last month, Trump issued a pardon for him. (Spokespeople for Hayes and Ethena declined to comment.)
Another partner of World Liberty is New York-based Ondo Finance, which is invested by Peter Thiel's venture capital firm Founders Fund .
“You’ll thank me later”
In December 2023, World Liberty made its first purchase of more than 130,000 tokens from Ondo Finance. This news once pushed up the price of Ondo coin, and was reported in many crypto media as "a heavy bet by Trump's company."
In January 2024, Ondo donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee, gaining access to a candlelight dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, where guests included several cabinet nominees. Ondo also sponsored another inaugural event, Crypto Ball. Subsequently, Donald Trump Jr. and the World Liberty management team were the keynote speakers at a crypto conference held by Ondo in New York.
“We weren’t sure if this moment would ever come,” Ian De Bode, Ondo’s chief strategy officer, said on stage. “But sometimes the stars align.”
In February 2024, Eric Trump recommended investment advice to fans on Musk's social platform X: "In my opinion, now is a good time to increase your position in $ETH."
$ETH is the code for Ether. He added: "You'll thank me later," before deleting the comment.
But his advice soon came true.
The following month, President Trump announced the establishment of the "US Crypto Reserve", a digital version of the "Gold Reserve" to support the crypto industry.
The reserve will include #Bitcoin and Ethereum, and Trump also emphasized that Ethereum will "be the core of the reserve."
Influenced by the president's announcement, the price of Ethereum rose by more than 13% that day.
World Liberty became a direct beneficiary. According to tracking by on-chain data company Arkham, the company had quietly purchased $240 million worth of Ethereum in the previous months.
If no holdings were sold, the market value of this portion of assets would have increased by $33 million on the day of the president's announcement alone. Although prices have since retreated, the gains show a clear link between policy statements and personal interests.
This pattern soon repeated itself.
In March 2024, Trump called on Congress to pass stablecoin legislation at a crypto conference via video link. He said the rise of stablecoins would "further entrench the dollar's dominance."
Currently, the Senate and the House of Representatives have respectively submitted bills that are conducive to the issuance of stablecoins. Trump's remarks just provide the political momentum for "loosening" the industry.
A week later, World Liberty announced that it would launch its own stablecoin, USD1. “The future is here, and it’s bright!” Zach Witkoff wrote on X.
President Trump hosted the first Digital Asset Summit at the White House last month.
World Liberty’s stablecoin plan quickly sparked a new round of controversy. The company announced that it would be issued through the Binance platform , which had just reached a settlement with the US Department of Justice over criminal charges.
This week, Witkov, Herro and Folkman met with Binance founder CZ in Abu Dhabi.
CZ served four months in prison in the United States on money laundering charges and is seeking a pardon from the Trump administration. A pardon request is in the works, according to people familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal also previously reported the matter.
The intersection between Trump's policy statements and business interests has aroused the vigilance of congressional Democrats. They tried to include an amendment in the pending stablecoin bill to prohibit the Trump family from issuing stablecoins.
But the amendment failed to pass, and all the controversy surrounding World Liberty seems to have failed to slow its expansion.
Last month, Zach Witkoff was invited to attend the first Digital Asset Summit held at the White House.
After the meeting, he posted a photo on social media of him, Herro and Folkman standing outside the White House, all three of them smiling brightly.
"Thank you, Mr. President," Witkov wrote.
