Trump teams up with pickup artist for new crypto scheme
Trump teams up with pickup artist for new crypto scheme
Donald Trump is not just running for president; he's also launching a new crypto company.
Trump, according to reports, is the "Chief Crypto Advocate" for the nascent venture, known as World Liberty Financial. Trump's three sons also have roles. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, in addition to being co-chairs of the Trump 2024 transition team, are "Web 3 Ambassadors" for World Liberty Financial. Both have been promoting the company through their social media accounts. 18-year-old Barron Trump is World Liberty Financial's official "DeFi Visionary."
Trump has already blurred the line between World Liberty Financial and his presidential campaign. In an August 29 post on X, Trump used an excerpt from his July campaign speech at the BitCoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, to promote the new company. In the speech, Trump pledged to make the United States "the crypto capital of the planet."
What will World Liberty Financial do, exactly? Neither Trump nor his business partners have released many details. Broadly, World Liberty Financial will be involved in "DiFi" or decentralized finance. DiFi companies offer financial services outside of the traditional banking system, typically allowing peer-to-peer lending, borrowing, savings, and other services. World Liberty Financial also says it wants to facilitate "mass adoption of stablecoins," crypto tokens pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, "securing America’s financial leadership and influence on the global stage." It's unclear how the company will accomplish those goals.
If Trump wins in November, he would be in a position to dramatically increase the value of his family's stake in World Liberty Financial. Indeed, the company appears to be structured to take maximum advantage of a second Trump term.
A white paper laying out the details of World Liberty Financial's ownership structure was obtained by the industry publication Coindesk. Ownership in the company will be established through the issuance of a "governance" token. Notably, 70% of these tokens are allocated to "insiders" like Trump and his sons. Coindesk reports that this is "a significantly higher-than-normal allocation."
Typically, most of these kinds of tokens are offered for public sale because "proceeds have historically been largely invested back into projects, to grow them." (The company is reportedly planning on valuing the company at $1.8 billion.) Reserving most of the tokens for insiders "raises the question of whether the project is an attempt to cash in on the Trump family's fame rather than build a novel DeFi platform." The industry term for this is a "rug pull," where "founding teams hype up a project only to dump their own tokens once retail traders begin buying."
Another complicating factor is that, currently, the Securities and Exchange Commission treats most new crypto tokens as securities, particularly when marketed as investment opportunities. This means that absent complying with the SEC's regulations on issuing securities, World Liberty Financial's governance token could be illegal.
The company appears to be getting around this problem by making its governance tokens non-transferable at the outset. According to the white paper, the tokens will be "locked indefinitely in a wallet or smart contract until such time, if ever, [the tokens] are unlocked through protocol governance procedures in a manner that does not contravene applicable law." In other words, a future Trump administration could unlock the value of World Liberty Financial's tokens by appointing an SEC chair who is friendly to the crypto industry.
Notably, Trump has publicly pledged to immediately "fire" SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who has sought to rein in the crypto industry. That decision could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Trump and his family.
Trump's business partner is a professional pickup artist
World Liberty Financial is not owned by Trump or his family. The company is registered to Zak Folkman. Previously, "Folkman previously registered a company called Date Hotter Girls LLC and posted seminars on YouTube on how to pick up women." One of Folkman's "masterclasses" provided instruction on how to "Become the Ultimate Alpha Male." Folkman also partnered with Logan Paul to create Subify, a "censorship-free" competitor to OnlyFans, which sells subscriptions to explicit content, and Patreon.
Folkman, World Liberty Financial's head of operations, also has a checkered history in the crypto industry. Folkman previously co-founded Dough Finance, which lost more than $2 million of customer funds in a July 2024 hack. Early code from World Liberty Financial appears to be lifted "directly from Dough Finance." It is unknown if that code will be used in the final product or if that code contains the vulnerability exploited in the Dough Finance hack.
Trump fans already scammed
Last year, Americans "were duped out of more than $5.6 billion last year through fraud schemes involving cryptocurrency," according to an FBI report released on Monday. World Liberty Financial has not even launched yet, and it has already unwittingly facilitated two scams.
World Liberty Financial has built a large community on Telegram, a popular messaging service, attracting more than 200,000 users. But a "rival channel operated by cyber criminals has managed to place ads on the official channel." The rogue channel, called "World Liberty Financial Airdrop" offers users "up to $15,000 worth of cryptocurrency for anyone who 'connects' their crypto wallet." 70,000 users have joined the fraudulent channel, although it is unclear how many have been taken in by the scam.
Separately, "the X accounts of Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump and Tiffany Trump were compromised" and "unauthorized users posted links to a hoax website" which purported to sell World Liberty Financial tokens. The posts "were viewed by at least 200,000 people" and "around 2,000 people collectively purchased $1.8 million worth of the fake token."
Grifters gonna grift.
Now that Barron is a legal adult, his father has to pull him into the family criminal enterprises, because that is how mafia dons operate. So, his path is now set by his family, but I see none of the female Trumps are involved in this business. Wonder who the daughter is going to vote for. Her life will be better if her father is not president. She can try to fade into the background if he is out of office, but fat chance if she is in it. The children are all doomed to be forced into lives of crime unless they break free. Not that I feel sorry for them compared to the millions of children in this country and on this planet who will be adversely effected if Trump wins again.