Donald Trump is preparing to launch a cryptocurrency business

Former President Donald J. Trump said Thursday that he is preparing to launch a new cryptocurrency business, as his presidential campaign aggressively takes the multibillion-dollar crypto industry to court ahead of the November election.

In a video posted on X, Mr. Trump said he would launch the crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, in a livestream on Monday at 8 p.m. “We are embracing the future with crypto, and leaving the slow and old big banks behind,” he said.

The announcement was light on details and did not explain the extent of his connection to the project. His two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., have promoted World Liberty Financial in recent weeks, posting links to a channel on the messaging app Telegram that provides updates on the project.

A post on World Liberty Financial's Telegram channel on Thursday said Mr. Trump would appear on the livestream from Mar-a-Lago, his country club in Palm Beach, Fla. As stated in the post.

It is unusual for presidential candidates to launch new businesses in the middle of campaigns, and Mr. Trump's business interests have raised concerns about conflicts of interest throughout his political career. He also owns a large stake in Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of the conservative social media platform Truth Social. The company's stock has plunged in recent weeks, reducing the value of its shares by billions of dollars.

World Liberty Financial is Mr. Trump's latest attempt to ingratiate himself with the crypto industry. On the campaign trail, he pledged to end a crackdown on the industry by the US government, which has pushed for stricter regulations on digital currencies. In July, Mr Trump spoke at the annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville, one of the biggest crypto gatherings of the year, promising to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”.

The pitch seems to be working. Several prominent crypto executives, including Gemini exchange founders Cameron and Tyler Winkleves, have donated to Mr. Trump's election effort. Fairshake, an industry-funded super PAC, has raised more than $150 million to elect pro-crypto candidates in congressional races backed by a mix of Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. Trump hasn't always been a crypto booster. In 2021, he said Bitcoin “looks like a scam.” But his view seems to have changed during the campaign. This year, he hosted an event at Mar-a-Lago for people who bought a line of nonfungible tokens, crypto collectibles known as NFTs, that he released.

Exactly what World Liberty Financial is designed to accomplish is unclear. A copy of the project's white paper, obtained by crypto news website CoinDesk, said it would offer a lending and lending service with its own crypto tokens.

Representatives for World Liberty Financial and the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Trump's embrace of crypto has made him popular among digital currency investors. But the promotion of his family's World Liberty Financial has drawn mixed reactions in the crypto world.

“This really hurts Trump's election chances, especially if it gets hacked,” crypto venture investor Nick Carter wrote on X this month. “At best it's an unnecessary distraction, at worst it's a source of enormous embarrassment and (additional) legal trouble.”

The project has already become a target for hackers and scammers. This month, unauthorized posts appeared on the X accounts of Mr Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump and his young daughter Tiffany Trump. The posts directed visitors to a fake version of World Liberty Financial's website

“This is a scam!!!” Eric Trump wrote on X. “@LaraLeaTrump and @TiffanyATrump's Twitter profiles have been compromised!!”