On Thursday, former President Donald Trump floated a proposal to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet” and began promoting his family’s new crypto platform, “World Liberty Financial,” formerly known as “The DeFiant Ones.”
“This afternoon I’m going to lay out my plan to make sure America is the cryptocurrency capital of the world,” Trump said on social media. “They want to choke you out and put you out of business. We’re not going to let that happen.”
At the time of writing, World Liberty already had nearly 30,000 followers on Twitter. Few details have been released about the project’s goal or operational direction.
The new crypto platform appears to be a joint family effort backed by sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.
“I think there’s been a lot of inequality in that only certain people can get finance,” Donald Trump Jr. recently told the media about the crypto platform’s rationale. “This notion of decentralized finance is obviously very appealing to people like me who have been debanked.”
Eric Trump hinted at the project in a post on Wednesday: “I am thrilled to announce the launch of @WorldLibertyFi! A new era of finance has arrived,” Trump said. In previous media interviews, Trump has talked about digital real estate, though it is unclear whether real estate tokenization is part of the platform’s vision.
Trump has actively sought to raise funds in cryptocurrencies during the 2024 presidential campaign and appeared as the keynote speaker at this year’s annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee. So far, his campaign has already raised $25 million from wealthy crypto executives and groups, leading Trump to pledge to ban central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), promote the creation of a national cryptocurrency reserve, and guarantee that the government will not sell cryptocurrencies obtained through law enforcement seizures.
“For too long, the average American has been held to the punch by big banks and financial elites,” Trump told his TruthSocial supporters this summer. “It’s time for us to take a stand — together.”
