Cryptocurrencies were first mentioned roughly sixteen minutes after Republican former President Donald Trump’s “State of Crypto” address at X. Over an hour later, only a few of the promised details about the family’s secretive new crypto project had been provided.
For more than a month, the former president and his family have been pushing a project called World Liberty Financial, promising it will do several things at once.
Early details suggest that “World Liberty Financial” will be a kind of crypto banking platform, with 70% of the equity held by Trump family members and a small group of insiders. Users will be able to borrow and lend crypto on the platform, and original investors will be paid through fees.
Now, with 50 days left until the presidential election, the Republican nominee said he will launch World Liberty Financial at a Twitter Spaces event that begins just after 8 p.m. Eastern time on Monday from his Palm Beach resort and home, Mar-a-Lago.
The Republican presidential candidate began the conversation about crypto by talking about how much his three sons know about the industry and how “they have shown great insight.”
“Barron knows a lot about this,” Trump said of his youngest son. “He talks about his wallet. He has four wallets or something, but he knows all about it.”
Organizers had hoped to bring Barron Trump onto the livestream, but by the time they got to him, the college freshman had already left.
From there, Trump raised a familiar issue, talking about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s perceived hostility toward the digital currency industry. Many high-profile figures in the industry take issue with SEC Chair Gary Gensler, claiming he is regulating the industry through enforcement actions rather than regulations.
During Trump's 40-minute fireside chat, he explained how he “didn't have much interest” in crypto initially. But he said that changed when sales of his Trump trademarked nonfungible token collection were paid for with crypto. “I think my kids have opened my eyes more than anything.”
CNBC sent detailed questions to the World Liberty Financial Press email address on Monday. Some time later, CNBC received an email reply sent from an anonymous Gmail account that did not answer CNBC's questions nor list the sender's name.
Monday's event came at an unprecedented moment for Trump's presidential campaign.
On Sunday afternoon at the 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 of the course when shots were fired. The FBI has described the incident as an apparent assassination attempt on the former president.
Witkoff is a longtime friend of Trump. He is also part of the small group of founders of World Liberty Financial, according to an internal report on the project obtained by CoinDesk.
Witkoff sat to Trump’s right during Monday night’s speeches, and explained how he brought the two Trump family crypto entrepreneurs together.
“My son introduced me to two partners, Chase Herro and Jack Folkman, who are extraordinarily intelligent people… These guys are smarter than any currency trader I've ever met. And they started talking to me about decentralized finance, which means frictionless finance, and why that makes sense for people and people who can't get credit,” he said.
“When I started to understand this, I said, ‘Who can understand this better than the Trump family?’ And we initially had a meeting with Eric, Don Jr., and the president and his lawyer. And we said, let’s move this forward. We’ve been working on this for about nine months,” Witkoff said.
Along with Trump, Witkoff is one of at least half a dozen members of the project’s “leadership team.” This means he will also share a 70% stake in the crypto bank that will be issued to its founding members at launch.
Seventy percent is an unusually large equity stake for the founders of a crypto platform, according to several industry experts, including crypto-specific venture capitalists. Typically founders' stakes are closer to 20%.
As Witkoff noted, the parallels with Trump’s other venture, Trump Media Technology Group, were inevitable.
In that case, two former cast members of Trump's NBC hit “The Apprentice” approached Trump with the idea of a new, conservative social network in 2021. Three years later, TMTG's stock has boosted Trump's net worth by billions of dollars, and Truth Social is his platform of choice.
According to information provided by a member of the group's founding team, the founders include Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump, in addition to Trump and Witkoff, and Witkoff's son Jack Witkoff.
A copy of the internal report, known as a white paper and obtained by CoinDesk, lists Barron as “Chief DeFi Visionary,” Eric and Donald Jr. as “Web3 Ambassadors” and Trump Sr. as “Chief Crypto Advocate.”
Although Trump will receive compensation from the project, the platform is not owned, managed, operated, or sold by members of the Trump family, according to Bloomberg's report.
The anonymous Gmail account that responded to CNBC claimed the project had not yet produced a white paper, raising further questions about whether it was ready to launch on Monday.
According to a person familiar with the project, real estate investor Witkoff and Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, are two of the people making decisions at World Liberty Financial. Both are new to the crypto industry.
CNBC attempted to ask Eric Trump and Witkoff about their leadership roles at World Liberty but did not receive an immediate reply.
Witkoff has shown little interest in learning how the platform works, according to a person familiar with the project.
CNBC reached out to World Liberty Financial, the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization for details about the project but did not immediately receive a response.
Much of what the public knows about World Liberty is based on interviews Trump’s sons gave to the press last month, a leaked white paper, which is a sort of manifesto for the crypto project, and conversations with people familiar with the project.
According to a person familiar with the project, anyone who wants material details about the platform, including the white paper, is being asked to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Some prominent members of the industry have become newly enamored with Trump in 2024, giving the Republican presidential candidate their cash and support as he took on increasingly pressing issues during the campaign, culminating in a keynote address at the biggest bitcoin event of the year in Nashville in July.
However, some of those supporters say they are concerned that this foray into crypto could threaten Trump’s relationship with the sector more broadly if the launch doesn’t go as planned.
A person familiar with the project says Donald Trump Sr. is not yet involved with the platform.