撰文：David Yaffe-Bellany、Sharon LaFraniere、Matthew Goldstein

Translated by: BitpushNews Shawn

In a live broadcast, Donald Trump officially launched his latest business project, World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company led by two digital currency entrepreneurs with limited experience in the high-end business world.

The day after an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, he appeared on a live stream to promote his latest business project: cryptocurrency.

“We’re going to have to do cryptocurrency, whether we like it or not,” Trump said at X. “It’s what I have to do.”

He was joined on the livestream by family friends, Trump's two sons - Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump - and two little-known cryptocurrency entrepreneurs who together launched Trump's cryptocurrency business, World Liberty Financial, a project that has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest for Trump and surprised even some of his most ardent supporters in the crypto industry.

Trump has been promoting the program since August, but its exact purpose is unclear. There is no official launch date. During the live broadcast, Trump did not directly mention the specific details of the program, leaving it to two entrepreneurs, Chase Herro, who calls himself the "bad boy of the internet," and Zachary Folkman, who teaches courses on how to attract women.

It is rare for a presidential candidate to launch a new business just weeks before an election, especially one explicitly designed to benefit himself and his family. But throughout his political career, Trump has often been involved in business ventures that ethics experts have considered questionable. Trump is the majority owner of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of his social media platform Truth Social, which accounts for about $2 billion of his personal wealth.

Danielle Bryan, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group, said Trump’s involvement in cryptocurrency would raise serious conflict of interest issues if he is elected in November. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has already cracked down on the crypto industry, arguing that almost all cryptocurrencies are unregistered securities that should be regulated like Wall Street stocks.

"He could use his influence to push regulators to favor the businesses he's involved in," Bryan said. Ethics experts have raised similar concerns about Trump's ownership of social media companies. Representatives for the Trump Organization and World Liberty Financial did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump has been a cryptocurrency skeptic for years, even calling Bitcoin a "scam." But on the campaign trail, he has gradually become a supporter of cryptocurrencies, attending a popular industry conference and attracting donations from crypto executives. "You're looking at a very hostile SEC," Trump said in a live broadcast on Monday. "I have a different attitude."

Planning for World Liberty Financial began nine months ago, and real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, a Trump family friend who is pushing the project, said he introduced Herro and Folkman to Trump's sons, who are leading the project.

By July, Puerto Rico-based AMG Software Solutions filed a trademark application for the platform. The next month, Trump, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. began posting content about the project on X.

In a live broadcast on Monday, Trump and his sons said cryptocurrencies would change the financial system, but did not elaborate on what their business projects planned to achieve. However, according to people familiar with the matter, World Liberty Financial was described by some insiders as a lending platform. According to a white paper reviewed by The New York Times, the project will launch a new cryptocurrency called $WLFI and sell it to the public.

On its official X and Telegram accounts, World Liberty Financial said the project’s goal is to drive “mass adoption of stablecoins,” a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a constant value ($1). A person familiar with the project described the project as similar to an existing service, Instadapp, an app that allows users to manage investments across multiple crypto platforms.

According to the list of team members in the white paper, several members of the Trump family are involved in the business. Trump himself serves as the "chief cryptocurrency advocate." His 18-year-old son Barron Trump is listed as the project's "DeFi (decentralized finance) visionary." Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. serve as "Web3 ambassadors" respectively.

The white paper’s disclaimer states that the platform is not owned by Trump, the Trump Organization or his family, though family members may be compensated for it. (The white paper was first reported by cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk.)

Steve Witkoff played an active role in the project, which he envisioned in part as a way to give Barron Trump entrepreneurial experience and steer him away from meme coins, a class of cryptocurrencies rife with scams, according to people familiar with the matter. A spokesman for Witkoff declined to comment.

Barron Trump was not present at the event, but Trump said his son is a cryptocurrency enthusiast. "He has four wallets," Trump said. "He knows all about this stuff."

The project is led by Herro and Folkman. In a live broadcast, Herro said his goal is to allow "every ordinary American" to participate in cryptocurrency investment.

“This country has been very good to me, and crypto has been very good to me,” Hero said.

Herro is a relatively unknown figure in the cryptocurrency world. According to him, he was sentenced to prison for a long period of drug involvement in his youth, but later turned over a new leaf and became successful. In 2022, he appeared at a cryptocurrency seminar hosted by Jordan Belfort (the inspiration for the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street". At the meeting, Herro described stablecoins as "the biggest innovation since sliced ​​bread" and said that one of his favorite coins was "dynamic, crazy, almost like a Ponzi scheme."

For years, Herro worked closely with Folkman, who founded a company called Date Hotter Girls that offered courses on "how to attract, date and keep beautiful and high-quality women."

Herro and Folkman worked on multiple business projects in the U.S. Virgin Islands and later in Puerto Rico. Both owned property in Puerto Rico, which has attracted many cryptocurrency enthusiasts for its generous tax breaks, according to public records. Folkman was listed in a government database as one of those who received the tax breaks.

Before incorporating in Puerto Rico, Herro and Folkman operated Nexus Group, an internet advertising and media company that received similar tax benefits, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Herro also ran a cryptocurrency trading firm there called Pacer Capital.

In the live broadcast, Folkman said that the digital currency associated with World Liberty Financial would only be available to accredited investors due to the government's increasing crackdown on cryptocurrencies. He added that the lawyers "are watching me nervously."