Former President Donald Trump is expected to announce on Monday the launch of a new crypto platform called World Liberty Financial that will be controlled by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
The Republican presidential nominee plans to discuss the new initiative from his Mar-a-Lago resort at 8 p.m. ET on September 16, 50 days before Election Day. In recent weeks, the Trumps have been promoting the initiative on social media, billing it as “the future of crypto.”
Barron, Trump’s 18-year-old son and a freshman at New York University, is considered the project’s “DeFi visionary,” according to a white paper about the project obtained by cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk. DeFi, short for “decentralized finance,” is a term that refers to financial services offered through public blockchains.
“We are embracing the future with crypto and leaving behind the slow, outdated big banks,” Trump said in a video posted Thursday on X from Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s cryptocurrency plans fit with the former president’s campaign promise to make the United States the “cryptocurrency capital of the world.” But the move also raises concerns about how Trump could use federal resources to advance a personal financial agenda.
“Taking a pro-crypto stance is not necessarily troubling; the troubling aspect is doing it while starting to profit personally from it,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, told The Associated Press.
Libowitz added: “The success of this initiative could be closely linked to American economic policy.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment.
What is World Liberty Financial?
Because the Trumps have released few details about World Liberty Financial, not much is known about how the platform works. Cryptocurrency exchanges are platforms where investors can buy and sell digital currencies, similar to how a traditional stock exchange works.
Eric Trump said the startup would promote “financial independence,” while Donald Trump Jr. said it would “make finance great again.”
According to the project’s whitepaper obtained by CoinDesk, 70% of the company’s tokens will be reserved for company insiders, while the remaining 30% will be distributed through a public sale. A portion of those proceeds will go to a founding team, the report said, citing the whitepaper.
Why is Trump launching a cryptocurrency exchange?
Millions of Americans have invested in or traded cryptocurrencies, even though these digital assets tend to attract young men, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
Forty-three percent of American men ages 18 to 20 say they have invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency, compared to 16% of the general population.
In May, Trump announced that his campaign would begin accepting cryptocurrency donations, part of an effort to create and solicit support from what he called a “crypto army.”
In contrast, when he was president, Trump described himself as “not a fan” of cryptocurrencies. In 2019, he tweeted that cryptocurrencies “can facilitate illegal behavior, including drug trafficking and other illegal activities.”
—The Associated Press contributed to this report.
