Plans by former president Donald Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, to launch a crypto startup have set off alarm bells among even his staunchest allies in the sector, according to a new report in Politico.
The two brothers have spent recent weeks touting World Liberty Financial, their soon-to-be-launched, shrouded-in-secrecy cryptocurrency firm.
But a string of mishaps, including Trump family members getting hacked by scammers and concerns about World Liberty’s deep connections to a blockchain firm that lost $2 million because of security shortfalls, has some arguing they should pack it up before they begin.
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“This is a huge mistake,” Nic Carter, a partner at crypto venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures and a Trump backer, told Politico. “It looks like Trump’s inner circle is just cashing in on his recent embrace of crypto in a kind of naive way, and frankly it looks like they’re burning a lot of the good will that’s been built with the industry so far.”
The scammers are already storming the gates. Earlier this week, Trump’s daughter-in-law and daughter were hacked and their X accounts used to promote a crypto token purported to be from Don Jr. and Eric’s startup. That forced the company to play damage control, alerting people not to “click on any links or purchase any tokens shared from their profile.”
According to Coindesk, it’s at least the third time a token with dubious claims of Trump ties has been promoted. Infamous pharma bro and convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli claimed his DJT token, issued last month, was created with Trump’s youngest son, Barron, while the Trump-themed Restore the Republic token, which reached a market capitalization of $155 at its peak, fell 95 percent in a single day last month when Eric clarified no official Trump crypto had launched.
Then there’s the concerns about World Liberty Financial’s team. Coindesk obtained documents showing the Trump brothers’ firm circulating a white paper that describes a borrowing and lending service similar to Dough Finance, a blockchain app that was hacked for $2 million in July. World Liberty Financial lists the four people who set up Dough Finance as team members. One of them, Zachary Folkman, previously ran a pick-up artist platform called “Date Hotter Girls.”
Since-deleted code from World Liberty Financial, which Coindesk found on Github, also appeared to be lifted directly from Dough Finance.
Set against these concerns, the Trump siblings’ dad has promised to transform the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet” if he recaptures the White House come November, leading to charges that his crypto policymaking could benefit his family.
“Maybe it doesn’t move the needle for most people, but if this thing is hacked or regular folks lose money on it or it opens up the door for the SEC to investigate the team, it only looks like it has downside risk,” Carter, the Trump-supporting crypto VC, told Politico.
A Washington crypto industry insider, who spoke to the publication on the condition of anonymity, also said they had a “laundry list of concerns” about how the Trump crypto project could hurt the industry’s reputation.
