Former President Donald Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination for the November U.S. election, revealed that he plans to officially announce the establishment of a new cryptocurrency company on Monday. Some details of the project have been leaked in the draft proposal. At 8 a.m. on September 17, the live broadcast of Trump's crypto project WLFI began, and Trump began to speak.
Screenshot of Trump’s trailer for the new World Freedom Finance cryptocurrency company (Rug Radio, modified by CoinDesk using PhotoMosh)
With just a month and a half until the U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump has a packed schedule — rallies, debates, campaign speeches, and campaign trips across the country. Last weekend, his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, was targeted in what the FBI called an assassination attempt. Despite this, the former president and Republican candidate found time late Monday to launch a new cryptocurrency company: World Liberty Financial.
At 8 p.m., Trump will go live on X (formerly Twitter) to lay out the specifics of the blockchain application that he and his son have been promoting in the months leading up to the November presidential election.
The project has already sparked controversy. Hackers recently compromised the X account of a Trump family member to promote a fake link to a cryptocurrency company. While the real app has yet to be officially launched, leaked details about the project's leadership team — and its relationship to another recently hacked cryptocurrency app — have raised concerns among some of the former president's supporters in the cryptocurrency world.
Earlier this month, CoinDesk obtained a confidential draft of the project, outlining plans for applications designed to bring decentralized finance (DeFi) to the masses. Decentralized finance refers to blockchain-based tools that allow users to trade, borrow, lend and invest in assets directly without traditional middlemen. After deriding Bitcoin as coming “out of thin air” in 2019, Trump has made clear his embrace of the technology and has stepped up his support for cryptocurrencies in recent months, especially as the blockchain industry has become one of the biggest corporate fundraisers of the election cycle. In July, he outlined favorable cryptocurrency policies in a speech at the Nashville Bitcoin Conference, which drew multiple standing ovations and cheers from thousands of attendees. The white paper obtained by CoinDesk promotes World Liberty Financial as a way to “put financial power back into the hands of the people” in response to a “rigged” financial system.
Participants
World Liberty Financial’s team is made up of Trump family members (18-year-old Barron is listed as the chief “DeFi visionary”), traditional finance professionals, and blockchain industry leaders. The white paper states that Trump Sr.’s title in the project will be “Chief Cryptocurrency Advocate.”
The two people in charge of the project - Zak Folkman and Chase Herro - are not well-known in the cryptocurrency world. CoinDesk previously reported that the two were responsible for the development of Dough Finance, a DeFi product that failed to gain traction and was hacked this summer, losing $2 million. The pitch outlined in the World Liberty Financial white paper is very similar to Dough. Both platforms are designed as user-friendly interfaces for accessing the popular Ethereum-based lending market Aave, and some early code for the Trump-backed crypto app appears to be taken directly from Herro and Folkman's old projects. In addition to cryptocurrency, Folkman and Herro are also the founders of Subify, an uncensored subscription platform similar to OnlyFans, which is famous for its collaboration with influencer Logan Paul. Folkman registered a limited liability company for World Liberty Financial, and he used to hold seminars to instruct men on how to pick up women. According to a report published last week by Bloomberg, Herro calls himself “the asshole of the internet” and promotes failed cryptocurrencies, colon cleansing and get-rich-quick courses.
Trump Crypto Token
Crypto projects often issue governance tokens to “decentralize” their products and circumvent strict securities regulation. World Liberty has yet to formally unveil its plans for a cryptocurrency, but a white paper reviewed by CoinDesk suggests the project will eventually sell a governance token called WLFI. According to the document, the Ethereum-based WLFI token will be non-transferable, meaning it cannot be traded on the blockchain, but holders can use it to vote on changes to World Liberty’s development roadmap. An unusually large 70% of WLFI tokens have apparently been reserved for the World Liberty team and developers. The rest will be sold to the public, with proceeds from that sale also set aside for World Liberty insiders. While crypto projects often reserve a portion of their tokens to compensate founders, investors and developers, those groups rarely receive more than 20% or 30% of the total supply. WLFI has allocated far more tokens to insiders than its peers, and token presales are relatively rare in today’s crypto industry, as they often face legal and practical hurdles.
Community Response
Trump has cast himself as the lone supporter of cryptocurrency in this year’s presidential race, and his crypto ventures use anti-establishment rhetoric that could resonate with single-issue crypto voters and MAGA populists. (Neither Republican presidential candidate Trump nor his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, mentioned crypto during last week’s televised debate.) While it’s unclear how much World Free Finance will ultimately resemble its white paper, some of Trump’s supporters in the crypto industry worry that the whole plan could backfire.
After CoinDesk published its initial report on the World Freedom Finance white paper, prominent crypto industry figure and Trump supporter Nic Carter asked on X (formerly Twitter): “What can we, as crypto Twitter, do to stop the launch of World Freedom Coin?”
Despite the Trump family’s apparent involvement in World Liberty Financial, with Donald Trump set to formally unveil the project on Monday evening, the project’s white paper claims the platform has no affiliation with politics, stating: “World Liberty Financial is not owned, managed, operated, or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization, or any of their respective family members, affiliates, or principals.” It adds: “However, they may own $WLFI and receive compensation from World Liberty Financial and its developers. World Liberty Financial and $WLFI are not involved in politics and have no affiliation with any political movement.”
