A day after an apparent assassination attempt against Donald J. Trump, the former president appeared on a livestream on X on Monday, promoting his latest business venture: cryptocurrency.
“Crypto is one of those things we have to do,” Mr. Trump said. “Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.”
He was accompanied by his associates, including a family friend, some of Mr. Trump’s sons and some little-known crypto enthusiasts with no experience running a high-profile business. Together, they were launching a crypto venture called World Liberty Financial, which has raised concerns about conflicts of interest for Mr. Trump and worried some of his most vocal supporters in the industry.
Mr Trump has promoted the project since August, but its exact purpose is still unclear. On the livestream, he did not address the business directly, but rather his partners. One of them described himself as the “dirtbag of the internet”, while another taught tips on how to woo women.
It is unusual for a presidential candidate to launch a new business just weeks before Election Day. But throughout his political career, Mr. Trump has made business deals that government ethics experts have described as problematic. He is the majority owner of Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly traded parent company of his social media platform Truth Social, which accounts for about $2 billion of his personal wealth.
Daniel Bryan, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said that if Mr. Trump is elected, his involvement in the crypto venture would raise a serious conflict of interest. The Securities and Exchange Commission has argued that virtually all cryptocurrencies are unregistered securities and should be regulated like stocks traded on Wall Street.
Ms. Bryan said Mr. Trump “will be able to put pressure on regulatory agencies to favor businesses he is involved in.” Ethics experts have said his ownership of a social media company raises similar issues.
Representatives for the Trump Organization and World Liberty Financial did not respond to requests for comment.
For years, Mr. Trump was a crypto skeptic who described bitcoin as a “scam.” But during the election campaign, he became a vocal supporter, speaking at a popular industry conference and receiving donations from crypto executives.
The plans for World Liberty Financial began as early as July, when a trademark application for the new platform was filed by Puerto Rico-based company AMG Software Solutions. The following month, Mr. Trump and his two eldest sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., began posting about the project on X.
Privately, those involved in World Liberty Financial have pitched it as a borrowing and lending platform, according to three people with knowledge of the project. A white paper for the venture, reviewed by The New York Times, says it will have a new cryptocurrency called $WLFI that will be sold to the public.
On its official X and Telegram accounts, World Liberty Financial has said the project aims to drive “mass adoption of stablecoins,” a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a constant value of $1. A person with knowledge of the project described it as similar to an existing service called Instadapp, an application that allows users to manage their investments across a range of crypto platforms.
According to the list of team members included in the white paper, several members of the Trump family have roles in the business. Mr Trump's title is “Chief Crypto Advocate”. His 18-year-old son Barron Trump is listed as the project's “DeFi Visionary”, a reference to the branch of crypto known as decentralised finance. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr are described as “Web3 Ambassadors”.
A disclaimer at the end of the document says the platform is not owned or managed by Mr. Trump or his family, although family members may receive compensation from the project’s developers. (The white paper was first reported by CoinDesk.)
In addition to Trump, the group overseeing World Liberty Financial includes a family friend and a group of digital currency enthusiasts with no track record of running high-profile crypto businesses.
According to the white paper, real estate tycoon and close friend of Mr Trump, Steve Witkoff, and his son Jack are both involved in World Liberty Financial. On Sunday, the elder Mr Witkoff was playing golf with Mr Trump when the US Secret Service prevented an alleged assassination attempt on the former president at his golf course in Palm Beach, Florida.
Behind the scenes, Steve Witkoff has taken an active role, according to a person familiar with the planning. He saw the project partly as a way to give Barron Trump some experience with entrepreneurship and keep him away from memecoins, a scam-ridden segment of the crypto industry, the person said. A spokesman for Mr. Witkoff declined to comment.
During the X event on Monday, Mr Trump described Barron Trump as a crypto enthusiast. “He has four wallets or something,” Mr Trump said. “He knows this stuff inside out.”
Chase Herro, a crypto entrepreneur who has described himself as an internet “dirtbag,” is another leader of the venture, according to the white paper and two people with knowledge of the project. (Mr. Herro sometimes spells his last name as “Hero.”)
Mr. Herro, 39, has said he was a habitual drug offender and went to prison as a youth but later turned his life around and became wealthy. In 2022, Mr. Herro appeared at a crypto seminar hosted by Jordan Belfort, who inspired the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.” At the event, Mr. Herro called stablecoins “the greatest innovation since sliced bread,” and said his favorite coins were “vibrant and crazy and almost bordering on a Ponzi scheme.”
In the past few years, Mr. Herro has teamed up with another entrepreneur, Zachary Folkman, who is also listed in the World Liberty Financial White Paper. In 2010, Mr. Folkman started a company called Date Hotter Girls, which offered seminars on “attracting, dating and retaining beautiful and quality women.”
Mr. Folkman and Mr. Herro have started a variety of businesses together, first in the U.S. Virgin Islands and later in Puerto Rico. Both own homes in Puerto Rico, which has become a haven for crypto enthusiasts who were drawn by generous tax breaks, according to public records. Mr. Folkman is listed in a government database as one of thousands of people living in Puerto Rico who receive tax breaks.
Before setting up shop in Puerto Rico, Mr. Folkman and Mr. Herro ran an internet advertising and media company, The Nexus Group, in the US Virgin Islands that received a similar business tax break. Mr. Herro also ran a separate crypto trading business there called Pacer Capital.
In the U.S. Virgin Islands, Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman worked with Alex Golubitsky, a lawyer listed in the white paper as legal counsel to World Liberty Financial.
In an email, Mr. Golubitsky said he could not discuss the crypto venture. But he described Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman as “talented tech entrepreneurs.”