Let me take you back to September 2024, just weeks before the General Election and the origins of what would become World Liberty Financial. They trace back to a relationship between Trump’s now-Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and crypto entrepreneurs Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman. The objective was to promote mass adoption of US dollar-denominated stablecoins and democratise access to decentralised finance services by eliminating traditional financial intermediaries (as noted by MarketsWicki). It’s the classic move to shift from a regulated space into a world where the law of the jungle prevails. Witkoff saw an opportunity to be on the leading edge of the next grift.
He introduced Herro and Folkman to the Trump family, who were known never to pass up the chance at a new opportunity for a grift. To cut a long story short, World Liberty Financial emerged from this introduction. On October 15th, 2024, it launched its public token sale, seeking $300 million in investment by selling 20 billion WLFI tokens at $0.015 each. In its first two weeks of issue, there was little interest, and the tokens raised just $2.7 million.
Everything changed in November 2024 when Trump was reelected president for the second time. As noted by MarketsWiki:
The trajectory changed dramatically following the November 2024 US presidential election results, when demand surged significantly.
By November 2024, the platform had secured its first major investor when Justin Sun, founder of the TRON blockchain, announced a $30 million investment in WLFI tokens. Sun's investment marked a turning point for the platform, as it provided the necessary liquidity to kickstart operations and established him as an advisor to the project.
This was a clear indicator to Trump that the grift was on and that an untraceable crypto funding pipeline had been established which could facilitate anonymous pay-for-play once Trump was in the White House. It’s estimated that Sun actually invested close to $45 million. He later purchased a further $75 million in WLFI tokens in 2025 and was a staunch advocate for the venture. There is little doubt that Sun’s advocacy for the project led to a flood of investment. Bear in mind that when the tokens were first offered, the aim was to raise $300 million. This was then cut by 90%, with a new target of $30 million, following the initial lacklustre performance. Sun’s $30 million investment met the new goal in a single transaction.
This raises questions about Liberty World Financial's due diligence process and policies, given that they were happy to accept $30 million from a man who was the subject of SEC charges filed in March 2023 for secondary-market manipulation through wash trading. They weren’t interested in anything else but his money. Fast forward to March 2026, and the SEC dropped the charges in return for Sun paying a $10 million civil penalty.
It’s also worth noting that a little over a year after Trump was reelected, in April 2025, he disbanded the unit dedicated to investigating cryptocurrency-related fraud. In a memo issued by then White House Counsel Todd Blanche, he stated that the national cryptocurrency enforcement team (NCET):
“shall be disbanded effective immediately” He went on to state, “The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator”, claiming, “The prior administration used the Justice Department to pursue a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution.”
Blanche’s memo followed a statement by Trump when he said to reporters:
“The digital assets industry is critical to the nation’s economic development and innovation”.
Anyone in any doubt that Blanche is now merely Trump’s ventriloquist dummy Attorney General should think again. This story shows that Trump saw an opportunity to exploit crypto for his own gain. There remains a question of whether he actually knew Musk could fix the election, as both he and Musk have hinted at doing so after the election. I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, but it is, I think, worthy of a mention, because if he did think his election win was a certainty, that would no doubt have given him more confidence to bring Liberty World Financial to life prior to the election, so the crypto vehicle was in place before the election took place.
To recap, without Justin Sun, there was no momentum for Liberty World Financial. Then, in 2025, he bought $75 million in tokens after Trump was elected, and by March 2026, the SEC charges had been dropped in exchange for his paying a $10 million civil penalty. I would suggest a reward for services rendered.
In an article by Crystal Kim for Investopedia dated February 7th 2026, she notes:
World Liberty Financial was founded by President Donald Trump, his sons, the president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Witkoff’s sons. Its USD1 stablecoin, which aims to stay pegged to the U.S. dollar, is at the centre of the Trump family’s crypto venture—as is its token WLFI, which was recently trading around 11 cents, a fraction of its peak around 33 cents since its September launch.
Here is the makeup of the leadership team:
Donald J. Trump: Co-Founder (Chief Crypto Advocate)
Zach Witkoff: Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Zak Folkman: Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Chase Herro: Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
Steven Witkoff: Co-Founder
Donald Trump Jr.: Co-Founder (Web3 Ambassador)
Eric Trump: Co-Founder (Web3 Ambassador)
Barron Trump: Co-Founder (DeFi Visionary)
As ever with projects involving Trump, Sun found out the dangers of handing money to a Trump-backed project: on April 21st of this year, Sun filed a lawsuit in federal court in Northern California, accusing WLFI of embedding a secret "backdoor blacklisting function" in the platform's smart contract. The bottom line was that Sun is accusing the firm of fraud, breach of contract, and wrongfully freezing hundreds of millions of his tokens. By this time, don’t forget Sun was free of the SEC charges filed against him. It was just one crook fighting another.
Trump no longer needed Sun because he had what he needed. According to reporting by Peter Stone for The Guardian on August 13th 2026 :
“… brought in $799m in 2025 for Trump, according to public filings.
Last year too, Trump earned another $636m from his novelty memecoin $Trump, which Trump began marketing just days before his inauguration in 2025.”
The report continues that this is just part of an estimated accumulated:
$1.4bn from his crypto ventures according to financial disclosure forms he filed in June. Simultaneously, about one million investors in a Trump crypto scheme suffered almost $3.8bn in losses as their volatile crypto holdings tanked in value.
It certainly begs the question: is World Liberty Financial a deliberate attempt to provide an anonymous crypto pipeline that allows ANYONE, including foreign powers, to engage in pay-to-play activities that directly benefit Trump and his family? There is a very good reason Trump wants absolute immunity and wants to deny the IRS the ability to investigate his past activities. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and that if the true extent of corruption is revealed, he would face serious legal jeopardy.
I firmly believe that his actions represent a threat to national security and place Americans at risk. The fact that, as reported in the Wall Street Journal by Sam Kessler, Rebecca Ballhaus, Eliot Brown and Angus Berwick:
Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities.
The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East.
The report continues:
The investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who has been pushing the U.S. for access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter. Tahnoon—sometimes referred to as the “spy sheikh”—is brother to the United Arab Emirates’ president
It’s no surprise then that, as reported by Ari Hawkins and Ben Johansen in Politico on July 27th 2026, that:
The Trump administration ignored warnings from career staff at the Commerce Department when it granted the United Arab Emirates sweeping access to advanced American semiconductors and other technology, according to three former officials with knowledge of the reports and two other people familiar with the matter.
This whole affair is purely transactional from start to finish. If you go to the World Liberty Financial website, to say the ‘about us’ page is opaque would be the understatement of the year. It’s as if those behind it are invisible. Hardly surprising when data analytics show that about 85% of secondary-market buyers of World Liberty Financial's ($WLFI) tokens are currently holding unrealised losses and are underwater on their investments. Given the anonymous nature of crypto wallets, it’s difficult to put a number on it, but investigative groups estimate that losses on tokens have reached roughly $674 million, while Trump is up by around $800 million.
Just to add insult to injury. As reported by Erin Mansfield yesterday in a piece for USA Today:
The cryptocurrency company that made President Donald Trump nearly $800 million since he returned to the White House has received the green light to become a bank and potentially make him even more money.
World Liberty Trust Company received conditional approval from the Treasury Department on Aug. 14 to become a bank. The approval specifically gives World Liberty the right to issue a type of cryptocurrency called stablecoin, which is tied to the U.S. dollar.
This, my friends, is what is possible when you have taken control of all the levers of government and regulation and placed them in the hands of a convicted criminal who has spent his entire life believing that he is above the law. The really terrifying thing is, NOBODY is prepared or willing to stop him or stand in his way. As a result, he is operating a fiefdom with impunity.
Once Trump and his fellow crooks are allowed to operate as a bank, there is no question that more people will suffer as he and his chosen few embark on a legal robbery spree. Just think about it: the President of the United States is giving himself a license to operate unregulated in the banking space with the most volatile financial vehicle on earth. He and those close to him know this will open the door to untold wealth for the few at the expense of the many. What’s more, it will be almost impossible to unravel the level of corruption given the opaque nature of cryptocurrency. Sigh……
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Thank you for all this detail work!
trump AND his GOP maga regime and cronies..
WILL TRY TO stick around as long as they can still squeeze another nickel out of the American Treasury and the American taxpayers...
Because that's what GRIFTERS do!!
SAVE AMERICA and DEMOCRACY!!
VOTE 'EM ALL OUT!!
THEN LOCK 'EM ALL UP!!!