More than two hours into Republican former President Donald Trump‘s World Liberty Financial launch event on X Monday night, the team behind the Trump family’s new crypto project finally unveiled a key detail: Who can buy the forthcoming tokens it plans to release, and how shares of the project will be allotted.
For over a month, the former president and his family have been pumping up the endeavor with vague descriptions, promising that it will do many things at once.
Lofty goals set by those involved in the project on Monday night’s Twitter space suggest that World Liberty Financial will be a sort of crypto banking platform, where the general public will be encouraged to borrow, lend and invest in crypto.
There will also be an accompanying token called WLFI, founders said Monday.
According to founder Zak Folkman, the equity structure for these tokens will be that 20% of the project’s tokens is allotted to the founding team, which includes the Trumps, 17% of tokens are set aside for user rewards, and the remaining 63% of the coins will be made available for the public to purchase.
There will be no pre-sales or early buy ins, Folkman said.
An earlier leaked draft of an internal project outline had the founders’ share at 70%, sparking concerns that the project would be little more than a get-rich-quick scheme.
The token will be a Reg D token offering, which follows the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation D — a provision that makes it possible for a company to raise capital without first registering their securities with the commission so long as certain conditions are met.
These were themes Trump covered in a conversation early in the more than two hour call, talking about the perceived hostility of the Securities and Exchange Commission towards the digital currency industry.
Several high profile figures in the industry take issue with SEC Chair Gary Gensler, claiming that he is regulating the industry through enforcement actions, rather than with rules.
Over the course of Trump’s 40-minute fireside chat, he talked about how he “wasn’t overly interested” in crypto initially. But that changed, he said, when sales of his Trump trademarked nonfungible token collections were paid for with crypto. “I think my children opened my eyes more than anything else.”
Monday’s event came at an unprecedented moment for Trump’s presidential campaign.
On Sunday afternoon at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump and his longtime friend and political donor, Steve Witkoff, were between the fifth and sixth holes on the course when gunshots were fired. The FBI has characterized the incident as an apparent assassination attempt on the former president.
Witkoff is a longtime friend of Trump’s. He’s also part of the small group of World Liberty Financial founders, according to an internal report on the project obtained by CoinDesk.
Witkoff was seated to Trump’s right during Monday night’s spaces, and described how he brought the Trump family together two crypto entrepreneurs.
“My son introduced me to two partners, Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, who are exceptionally bright people …These guys are as smart as any currency traders I’ve ever met. And they began talking to me about decentralized finance, which means frictionless finance, and why it made sense for people and about the forgotten, who can’t get credit out there,” he said.
“As I began to understand that, I said, ‘Who would understand this better than this than the Trump family?’ And we had a meeting initially with Eric, Don Jr, and the president and his counsel. And we said, Let’s go pursue it. We’ve been on it for close to nine months,” said Witkoff.
Along with Trump, Witkoff is one of at least a half dozen members of the project’s “leadership team.”
As Witkoff spoke, the parallels with Trump’s other venture, Trump Media Technology Group, were unavoidable.
In that case, two former cast members on Trump’s NBC hit “The Apprentice” approached Trump in 2021 with an idea for a new, conservative social network. Three years later, TMTG’s stock has boosted Trump’s net worth by billions of dollars, and Truth Social is his platform of choice.
Alongside Trump and Witkoff, founders include Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump, as well as Witkoff’s son, Zach Witkoff, according to a person briefed by a member of the group’s founding team.
A copy of an early internal report, known as a white paper and obtained by CoinDesk, listed Barron as “Chief DeFi Visionary,” Eric and Donald Jr. as “Web3 Ambassadors,” and Trump Sr. as “Chief Crypto Advocate.”
But while the Trumps will receive compensation from the project, Bloomberg reports that the platform itself is “not owned, managed, operated or sold” by members of the Trump family.
Witkoff, a real estate investor, and Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, are the two people calling the shots at World Liberty Financial, according to a person familiar with the project. Both are new to the crypto industry.
CNBC reached out to Eric Trump and Witkoff to ask about their leadership roles within World Liberty, and didn’t immediately receive a reply.
Until Monday, much of what the public knew of World Liberty was based on interviews Trump’s sons had given to the press over the past month, as well as the leaked white paper that served as a sort of crypto project manifesto, and conversations with people familiar with the project.
Anyone who wanted material details of the platform, including the white paper, was being asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, according to a person familiar with the project
Some visible members of the industry newly cozied up to Trump in 2024, lending their cash and endorsement to the Republican presidential nominee, as he adopted increasingly bullish talking points on the campaign trail, which culminated in the GOP pick delivering a keynote address at the biggest bitcoin event of the year in Nashville in July.
Some of those supporters however, say they are concerned that this foray into crypto could jeopardize Trump’s rapport with the sector more broadly if the launch doesn’t go as planned.
A person familiar with the project says that Donald Trump, Sr. isn’t that involved in the platform thus far.
