After more than a year of speculation, Donald Trump announced Monday that registrations for World Liberty Financial – his family business’s entry into the world of cryptocurrencies – had finally begun.
And it’s a family affair, with youngest son Barron even playing a role.
“I promised to make America great again, this time with crypto,” the former president tweeted. The company aims to “help make America the crypto capital of the world!” The whitelist of eligible people is officially open – this is your chance to be part of this historic moment.
Trump placed his assets in the company he spent his life building into a trust when he entered the White House in 2017 and turned day-to-day management of the company over to his sons Donald Jr. and Eric .
Ahead of the launch, Eric Trump spoke exclusively with The Post and explained WLF’s mission: to provide Americans with an alternative to “big” banks and “traditional” lenders.
“No one knows better than me and my family how complicated, corrupt and biased today’s banking systems are,” the 40-year-old executive vice president of the Trump Organization said. “The system is not working. If it doesn’t work for us, it certainly won’t work for people with a few fewer zeros in their accounts. We have to solve this problem.
The Trumps’ solution is decentralized finance (DeFi) company WLF – tagline: “Be DeFiant” – and their goal is simple but ambitious: to make it as easy for people to get a loan as sending a text message.
“We realized: why? Why can’t someone just write this into a simple program that allows ordinary people easy access to financial markets and healthy debt without all those fees and middlemen? For what? There is absolutely no reason left,” Trump said. “It’s not just about Bitcoin. This is about making financial markets a truly decentralized and truly fair exchange for the first time.”
To do this, Trump said, WLF will democratize banking by leveraging what blockchain does best: distributing digital ownership of physical value.
“WLF will not be an exchange” like Binance or Coinbase, WLF co-founder Zak Folkman told the Post. “It is a governance platform that will enable permissionless, peer-to-peer borrowing and lending of digital assets.”
This means that if someone needs money to remodel their kitchen or start a business, it can be reviewed, verified, and funded with real money in minutes instead of months.
“WLF’s platform is designed with simplicity, allowing blockchain newcomers to easily navigate DeFi with confidence. Our goal is to make it as easy to use DeFi as it is to use apps in the App Store,” Folkman said.
Trump said his company worked with “serious experts” and “true geniuses” like Folkman to prepare for the launch of WLF.
Crypto and DeFi are sleeping political giants that have finally started to stir in 2024.
Industries have given more than $190 million to political candidates on both sides of the aisle so far this cycle — but with a new tilt toward pro-business Republicans that is raising eyebrows on the left. This is up from just $60 million in 2020.
Blockchain newcomers appear ready to take another step into the spotlight – and the Trumps couldn’t be happier to help them.
Eric Trump told the Post that today’s banks are “slow” and “will almost certainly be replaced by DeFi” within the next 25 years.
His father was once skeptical of the new technology, but he has changed his mind: the former president promised to make America “the crypto capital of the planet” during his speech at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in July.
Donald Trump wooed crypto voters at the industry’s biggest event while Vice President Kamala Harris was nowhere to be found – even though she said she planned to learn more on the subject.
“There’s no reason for ordinary people to pay for a bank president’s third beach house,” Eric said. “People are being crushed by these middlemen and rich manipulators. But if someone has, say, 30 bitcoins, why would anyone stop them from borrowing for it? Well, soon they won’t be able to do that anymore. Then we’ll see who gets crushed.
WLF’s leadership team is also now official and includes Donald Trump, Eric Trump, Folkman, Donald Trump Jr., Chase Herron, real estate genius Steve Witkoff — and the former president’s youngest child, Barron Trump.
Eric Trump told the Post he can’t wait for the upcoming launch.
“This is an opportunity to undo these big institutions that have tried to eliminate us,” he said. “You don’t have to be a member of my family to know what that feels like. I think we are all ready for some freedom.
