Donald Trump to Unveil New Cryptocurrency Business During Monday Address From Mar-a-Lago

Details on the new business, which will be called World Liberty Financial, are limited, but Trump’s sons have spent weeks promoting it.

Former President Donald Trump is set to unveil a new cryptocurrency venture during an evening address from his Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday, the latest business pursuit that stands to benefit the ex-president as he mounts another bid for the White House.

Details on the new venture, which will be called World Liberty Financial, are limited, but Trump’s sons have spent weeks promoting it. The GOP nominee himself has teased the latest expansion of his family’s business empire from the same social media account that carries his political messaging.

“We’re embracing the future with crypto, and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind,” Trump wrote on X as he invited his followers to tune in to Monday’s announcement. The virtual event is expected to proceed as planned despite Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on Trump while golfing at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

No major party nominee has ever leveraged their candidacy for personal profit quite like Trump has during his third White House bid. Since entering the race nearly two years ago, Trump has netted millions of dollars selling new items featuring moments from his political life while also generating billions of dollars in wealth through a social media site where he speaks directly to supporters.

His fans can buy coffee table books featuring pictures and letters from his presidency or, if they prefer, a Trump-themed Bible. He has sold $399 golden sneakers and recently advertised to supporters “fifty all new stunning digital trading cards” for purchase at a cost of $99 each. Buy 75 and get access to a dinner gala with Trump, plus pieces of a suit he wore in his debate against President Joe Biden.

“These cards show me dancing and even holding some bitcoins,” Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social.

But this latest enterprise, taking off just 50 days before the election, comes with a hornets nest of ethical conflicts should Trump win in November. On the campaign trail, the former president has promised to usher in a wave of policies favorable to digital currencies as he courted the votes and financial support of the bitcoin community. Now, a company he is helping to get off the ground could stand to benefit from the actions he takes in the Oval Office.

There’s little precedent for a candidate creating such obvious overlapping obligations so close to an election, said Jordan Libowitz with the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“You generally see presidential candidates try to separate themselves from their conflicts of interest instead of bringing new ones into the fold,” Libowitz said. “It’s definitely new to see a president launching a new company while also at the same time talking up new policies that would potentially directly affect that company.”

Yesha Yadav, a law professor at Vanderbilt who studies financial regulation and cryptocurrencies, said Trump’s new undertaking also raises questions about what would happen if it necessitates enforcement action by the next administration.

It’s a reality that “needs to be taken seriously,” Yadav said, given the financial risks of a project that may attract hackers and investors “purely based on the celebrity of the former president and his family.”

No law requires presidents to divest from their wealth before taking office, but those who have held the office have traditionally gone to great effort to assure voters they had disentangled their executive decision making from their personal finances to prevent even the appearance of impropriety. President Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust before he took office. President Ronald Reagan and his Vice President George H.W. Bush moved their considerable wealth into trusts, too.

Trump, though, shattered historical norms in his first term when he turned over his businesses to his two sons instead of divesting or shielding himself from the management of the family’s transnational conglomerate.

The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about these concerns, while also insisting that his latest project would not distract from the former president’s intensifying race against Vice President Kamala Haris, now in the home stretch.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung argued that Trump has “out-worked” Harris and would continue to.

“There is nobody more committed than President Trump to save America from the weak, failed, and dangerously liberal policies of Kamala,” Cheung said.

Cashing in while campaigning

Trump was a businessman long before he entered politics and he has cashed in on his fame for decades, putting his name on everything from buildings to steaks. The businesses Trump has launched while campaigning have proven quite lucrative for the lifelong dealmaker.

Trump made about $7.2 million in 2023 through a licensing deal with NFT INT, LLC, the company that is selling digital NFT, or non-fungible token, “trading cards” featuring the former president, according to financial disclosures he filed in August.

In December, Trump began selling special edition NFTs featuring his