Trump to launch crypto platform: What to know

Former President Trump on Monday is expected to announce the launch of a new cryptocurrency project that would be led by his two oldest sons.

Trump’s crypto platform will be called World Liberty Financial and will be formally unveiled at 8 p.m. ET by the former president at an event at his Mar-a-Lago residence that will be broadcast on X Spaces.

“We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind,” Trump said in a video posted to social media platform X on Thursday.

The former president and his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been promoting the project on social media in recent weeks in advance of the platform’s launch, though they haven’t gone into detail about how the platform will operate.

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Crypto news outlet CoinDesk obtained excerpts of a draft white paper describing the project, which noted that the former president’s 18-year-old son, Barron, is listed as the project’s “DeFi visionary.” DeFi is shorthand for “decentralized finance” and is a reference to financial services performed on a public blockchain.

CoinDesk said, according to a person familiar with the plans for World Liberty Financial, that the new platform would include a new non-transferable cryptocurrency token called WLFI. The outlet’s source noted that as of early September, World Liberty Financial hadn’t finalized its plans.

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A draft white paper of the World Liberty Financial project suggested the group will release its own cryptocurrency token. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via / Getty Images)

According to the white paper draft reviewed by the outlet, 70% of WLFI tokens would be reserved for the project’s founders, team and service providers, while the remaining 30% of tokens would be distributed via a public sale with some of the proceeds going to insiders and to support the platform’s operations.

Trump has highlighted crypto as a part of his campaign platform and said he wants to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” – though the new project linked to his family could raise concerns about conflicts of interest.

The former president previously raised concerns about crypto during his first term in office. In a 2021 interview on FOX Business Network’s “Varney & Co.,” Trump said he has “not been a big fan” of cryptocurrencies and warned it’s “potentially a disaster waiting to happen.”

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Eric Trump, center, said earlier this month that the X accounts of Tiffany Trump, left, and Lara Trump, right, were compromised and used to tout crypto investments falsely linked to the World Liberty Financial project. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)

Earlier this month, the social media accounts of Republican National Committee Chairwoman Lara Trump and the former president’s daughter Tiffany were hacked and used to promote crypto investments ostensibly linked to the family project, according to Eric Trump.

Posts made by the compromised accounts falsely claimed that they were launching World Liberty Financial and solicited crypto investors. Eric Trump said X moderators quickly locked their accounts “within minutes” of the breach.

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World Liberty Financial’s official account published an alert warning users not to engage with the posts: “ALERT: Lara’s and Tiffany Trump’s X accounts have been hacked. Do NOT click on any links or purchase any tokens shared from their profiles.”

FOX Business’ Timothy Nerozzi contributed to this report.