Donald Trump's embrace of crypto is complete

A onetime crypto critic, the former president and current Republican presidential candidate has done more than endorse the industry's goals in Washington, DC.

Former President Donald Trump and his sons are now fully embracing the crypto industry. After endorsing the industry’s goals in Washington, D.C., Trump and his sons have now launched World Liberty Financial, a decentralised finance project for lending dollar-pegged stablecoins.

As with many of Trump’s business endeavors, World Liberty is shrouded in a cloud of doubt and promises. The venture boasts a diverse group of figures, some well-known in crypto circles and others less so.

So, who exactly is riding shotgun in Trump’s odd DeFi vehicle?

World Liberty’s “gold paper” lists Trump and his three sons — Donald Junior, Eric, and Barron — as members of the project’s support team. The former president is listed as chief crypto advocate while his sons are so-called web3 ambassadors. An earlier draft of the gold paper listed 18-year-old Barron as “DeFi visionary.”

Trump’s youngest son was once linked to a family-themed memecoin called DJT. Martin Shkreli, the convicted investment manager and social media personality, alleged that he and Barron created DJT, a Solana-based memecoin.

Barron's link to the project was never confirmed, and he did not comment on the matter publicly. In August, unidentified players “rugged,” or withdrew, the majority of the DJT token’s liquidity, leaving investors with worthless assets.

Eric Trump, executive vice president and trustee of the Trump Organisation, is one of the project’s leading promoters, along with his brother Donald Trump Jr. The siblings first began teasing the project on social media posts in August.

Eric is no stranger to his father’s history of blurring the lines between family affairs and finance. He notably signed the reimbursement checks to former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen who handled the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

In June, a New York state jury convicted Donald Trump for unlawfully covering up those payments as business expenses.

As for the Trump sons’ practical experience in crypto, there’s very little. Still, the former president said they changed his mind about the potential of the industry.

World Liberty is a fork of a defunct DeFi project called Dough Finance and will be deployed on DeFi’s biggest lending protocol, Aave. Forks aren’t unusual in DeFi, but Dough Finance was exploited for $2.1 million this summer. The attack occurred after the developers failed to code a way for the smart contract to verify the actions of users trying to connect to another protocol.

Several Dough Finance developers are now involved in World Liberty, including Chase Herro, aka “Hero,” and his frequent collaborator Zachary Folkman, as well as blockchain developer Bogdan Purnavel who goes by the online moniker 0xboga.

Folkman and Herro are listed as co-founders alongside New York real estate magnate Steven Witkoff.

Herro, a self-styled “dirtbag of the internet,” has a colorful backstory littered with several failed internet ventures, including a crypto trading platform called Pacer Capital. According to Bloomberg News, he said he made a fortune in internet advertising and dealt marijuana as a young man.

The Witkoff Family

A longtime friend of Donald Trump’s, Steven Witkoff has donated $2 million to his campaigns. Witkoff’s sons, Alex and Zach, are listed as co-founders of World Liberty.

Witkoff described Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman as “exceptionally bright people” in an X Spaces livestream to promote the project last month. He also said that World Liberty had been in development for “close to nine months.”

World Liberty also counts a retinue of advisers drawn from venture capitalists, lawyers, and blockchain engineers.

Sandy Peng, co-founder of Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Scroll, is among the project’s advisers as is Polychain Capital general partner Luke Pearson.

Accredited investors could begin participating in the World Liberty token sale on Tuesday.

According to onchain data, more than 9,000 Ethereum wallet addresses are currently holders of the WLFI token.

Our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent is Osato Avan-Nomayo. He covers DeFi and tech. Please contact him at osato@dlnews.com to share tips or information about stories.