New details, including who can buy in

More than two hours into Republican former President Donald Trump‘s World Liberty Financial launch event on X Monday night, the team behind the Trump family’s new crypto project finally unveiled a key detail: Who can buy the forthcoming tokens it plans to release, and how shares of the project will be allotted.

For over a month, the former president and his family have been pumping up the endeavor with vague descriptions, promising that it will do many things at once.

Lofty goals set by those involved in the project on Monday night’s X space suggest that World Liberty Financial will be a sort of crypto banking platform, where the general public will be encouraged to borrow, lend and invest in crypto.

There will also be an accompanying token called WLFI, founders said Monday.

The equity structure for these tokens will be that 20% of the project’s tokens are allotted to the founding team, which includes the Trumps, 17% of tokens are set aside for user rewards, and the remaining 63% of the coins will be made available for the public to purchase, said founder Zak Folkman.

There will be no pre-sales or early buy ins, Folkman added.

An earlier leaked draft of an internal project outline had the founders’ share at 70%, sparking concerns that the project would be little more than a get-rich-quick scheme.

The token will be a Reg D token offering, which follows the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation D — a provision that makes it possible for a company to raise capital without first registering their securities with the commission so long as certain conditions are met.

These were themes that Trump covered in a conversation format early on in the more than two hour event, as he spoke about the perceived hostility of the Securities and Exchange Commission towards the digital currency industry.

Several high profile figures in the industry take issue with SEC Chair Gary Gensler, claiming that he is regulating the industry through enforcement actions, rather than via rules.

Over the course of Trump’s 40-minute fireside chat at the top of the more than two hour livestream, he talked about how he “wasn’t overly interested” in crypto initially.

But that changed, he said, when sales of his Trump trademarked nonfungible token collections were paid for with crypto. “I think my children opened my eyes more than anything else.”

“Crypto is one of those things we have to do,” Trump said near the end of his remarks. “Whether we like it or not, we have to do it.”

Monday’s event came at an unprecedented moment for Trump’s presidential campaign.

On Sunday afternoon at 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 on the course when gunshots were fired. The FBI has characterized the incident as an apparent assassination attempt on the former president.

Witkoff is a longtime friend of Trump’s. He’s also part of the small group of World Liberty Financial founders.

Witkoff was seated to Trump’s right during Monday night’s livestream, and described how he brought the Trump family together with two crypto entrepreneurs to get the project started.

“My son introduced me to two partners, Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, who are exceptionally bright people …These guys are as smart as any currency traders I’ve ever met. And they began talking to me about decentralized finance, which means frictionless finance, and why it made sense for people. And about the forgotten, who can’t get credit out there,” Witkoff said.

“As I began to understand that, I said, ‘Who would understand this better than the Trump family?’ And we had a meeting initially with Eric, Don Jr., and the president and his counsel. And we said, ‘Let’s go pursue it.’ We’ve been on it for close to nine months,” said Witkoff.

As Witkoff spoke, the parallels between World Liberty Financial and Trump’s other recent venture, Trump Media & Technology Group, were inescapable.

In Trump Media’s case, two former cast members from Trump’s NBC hit reality show “The Apprentice” approached Trump in 2021 with an idea for a new, conservative social media platform.

Three and a half years later, Trump Media’s publicly traded stock has boosted Trump’s net worth by billions of dollars, and Truth Social is his social platform of choice.

Alongside Trump and Witkoff, founders of World Liberty Financial include Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump, as well as Witkoff’s son, Zach Witkoff.

A copy of an early internal report, known as a white paper and obtained by CoinDesk, listed Barron as “Chief DeFi Visionary,” Eric and Donald Jr. as “Web3 Ambassadors,” and Trump Sr. as “Chief Crypto Advocate.”

But while the Trumps will receive compensation from the project, the platform itself is “not owned, managed, operated or sold” by members of the Trump family.

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.

Until Monday, much of what the public knew about World Liberty was based on interviews Trump’s sons had given to the press over the past month, as well as a leaked white paper that served as a sort of crypto project manifesto, and conversations with insiders.

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

World Liberty Financial represents the latest step in Donald Trump’s evolving political and personal relationship with the crypto industry.

Some visible figures in crypto have cozied up to Trump during the 2024 election cycle, lending their cash and endorsements to the Republican nominee for president.

At the same time, Trump has adopted increasingly bullish talking points about crypto on the campaign trail. This culminated in his delivery of a keynote address in July at the biggest bitcoin event of the year in Nashville, Tennessee.

Some of these supporters however, have also said they are concerned that Trump’s foray into crypto himself could jeopardize his rapport with the sector more broadly, especially if the launch doesn’t go as planned.

Founders offered scant details on Monday about any future timelines for the project, saying only that new information will be shared on official social media channels, and warning fans not to fall for scams.