Donald Trump, who once called Bitcoin a scam, has launched a new cryptocurrency called World Liberty Financial. “Crypto is one of those things that we have to do,” he said in an interview with X. “Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.” The news comes a day after an assassination attempt on Trump at his golf course in Florida.
Trump enters this project with his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and two crypto entrepreneurs: Chase Herro (who once called stablecoins “borderline Ponzi scheme”) and Zachary Folkman, who founded a company called Date Hotter Girls. Trump’s 18-year-old son Barron Trump, who has no known crypto experience, is also billed as the “head of DeFi. [decentralized finance] who has a vision.”
The tokens themselves are said to be based on US dollar stablecoins. Some people involved in this business called it internally as a lending and borrowing platform, according to The New York Times.
Cryptocurrency is generally supposed to be decentralized, but a large portion of World Liberty Financial’s ruling tokens can be held by insiders, according to a draft of the project’s white paper seen CoinDesk. The remaining 30 percent will be distributed through a “public sale” and some of the money collected from that will be reinvested in internal projects.
When asked questions about the business in an X Spaces interview (above), Trump appeared to know nothing about it. “It’s very important. Crypto. AI. There are many other things. AI needs more energy than anything I’ve ever heard,” he said. He dismissed Barron’s expertise, saying he had “four bags” and likened it to learning a language like Chinese.
Some of the comments in the Spaces interview were not kind. “Let’s be honest Trump doesn’t even know what crypto is or why he’s being asked to issue it,” another said. Others noted that starting such a project before the election was inappropriate.
“I think it really hurts trump’s election hopes, especially if it gets hacked (it will be the sweetest DeFi target ever and it’s following the protocol it was hacked for),” said prominent crypto industry and self-proclaimed Trump supporter Nic Carter. in the post on X.
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