Trump Crypto Project World Liberty Financial provides few details so far

About sixteen minutes into Republican former President Donald Trump's “State of Crypto” speech at X, cryptocurrencies got their first mention. Over an hour, few of the promised details about the family's secretive new crypto project were delivered.

For more than a month, the former president and his family have been launching a project called World Liberty Financial, promising that it will do a lot together.

Initial descriptions suggest that “World Liberty Financial” will be a sort of crypto banking platform, with 70% of its 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 the principal investors will be paid in fees.

Now, with 50 days to go before the presidential election, the Republican nominee said he would launch World Liberty Financial at a Twitter space event that began after 8 p.m. Monday at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort and home.

The GOP presidential nominee opened the conversation around crypto by saying how much his three sons know about the industry and how “they've shown great judgment.”

“Barron knows a lot about this,” Trump said of his young son. “He talks about his wallet. He's got four wallets or something, but he knows these things.”

Organizers had hoped to bring Barron Trump to the livestream, but by the time they reached him, the college freshman had already left the venue.

From there, Trump covered familiar ground by talking about the Securities and Exchange Commission's perceived hostility toward the digital currency industry. Several high profile figures in the industry took issue with SEC Chair Gary Gensler, claiming he was regulating the industry through enforcement action rather than regulation.

During Trump's 40-minute fireside chat, he talked about how he initially “wasn't overly interested” in crypto. But that changed, he said, when the sale of his collection of nonfungible tokens bearing the Trump trademark was paid for with crypto. “I think my kids opened my eyes more than anything else.”

CNBC sent detailed questions to a World Liberty Financial Press email address on Monday. Moments later, CNBC received an email reply sent from an anonymous Gmail account, which did not respond to CNBC's questions or list a name for the sender.

Monday's incident 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 Wittkoff, were between the fifth and sixth holes of the course when shots were fired. The FBI characterized 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 World Liberty Financial founders, according to an internal report on the project obtained by CoinDesk.

Witkoff sat to Trump's right on Monday night's Spaces and described how he brought the Trump family together with two crypto entrepreneurs.

“My son introduced me to two partners, Chase Herro and Jack Folkman, who are exceptionally bright people…these guys are as smart as any currency traders I've ever met. Frictionless Finance, and Why It Made Sense for People and Forgotten People , who can't get credit there,” he said.

“When I started to understand this, I said, 'Who better to understand this than the Trump family?' And we initially had a meeting with Eric, Don Jr. and his mentor, and we said, we've been running this for about nine months.

Along with Trump, Witkoff is one of at least a half-dozen members of the project's “leadership team.” This means he will also share 70% of the crypto bank's shares that will be issued to its founding members at launch.

Seventy percent is an unusually large equity stake for crypto platform founders to hold, according to several industry experts, including crypto-specific venture capitalists. Typical founders' stake is around 20%.

As Witkoff talked about, the parallels with another Trump venture, the Trump Media Technology Group, were inevitable.

In that case, two former cast members of Trump's NBC hit “The Apprentice” approached Trump in 2021 with the idea of ​​a new, conservative social network. Three years later, TMTG stock has boosted Trump's net worth by billions of dollars, and Truth Social is his platform of choice.

In addition to Trump and Wittkoff, founders include Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump, as well as Wittkoff's son, Jack Wittkoff, according to a person briefed by a member of the group's founding team.

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.”

But although Trump will receive compensation from the project, Bloomberg reports that the platform itself is “not owned, operated, operated or sold” by members of the Trump family.

The anonymous Gmail account that responded to CNBC claimed the project had not yet produced a white paper, raising additional questions about whether it was ready to launch Monday.

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 World reached out to Eric Trump and Wittkoff to ask about their leadership roles at Liberty and did not immediately receive a response.

According to a person familiar with the project, Witkoff has shown little interest in learning the mechanics of how the platform works.

CNBC World reached out to Liberty Financial, the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization for details on the project and did not immediately return requests.

Much of what the public knows about World Liberty is based on interviews Trump's sons gave to the press last month, as well as a leaked white paper that serves as a sort of crypto project manifesto, and conversations with people familiar with the project. .

Anyone seeking material details of the platform, including the white paper, is being asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, according to a person familiar with the project.

Some visible members of the industry were newly sympathetic to Trump in 2024, lending their cash and endorsements to the Republican presidential nominee as he adopted increasingly bullish talking points on the campaign trail, delivering a major speech at the GOP pick-up. Best Bitcoin Event of the Year in Nashville in July.

Some of those supporters, however, say they worry that this push into crypto could jeopardize Trump's relationship with the sector more broadly if it doesn't go as planned.

A person familiar with the project said Donald Trump, Sr. has not been involved with the platform so far.