Latest news with #WorldLibertyFinancial
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump family crypto business announces $1.5 billion treasury company for World Liberty token
The Trump family's crypto business, World Liberty Financial, is using a publicly listed company, ALT5 Sigma Corp., to raise $1.5 billion for the purchase of its WLFI token. In a press release on Monday, ALT5 Sigma announced that it would sell a combination of 200 million new and existing shares and use the proceeds to buy the Trump family token. The move represents an effort by the Trump family to capitalize on a recent trend of using either small publicly traded or blank-check companies to let a broader swath of traders gain exposure to cryptocurrencies. The strategy was first popularized by Michael Saylor, who renamed his decades-old software company MicroStrategy to Strategy as he transformed it into a Bitcoin behemoth. He and company executives began adding billions of dollars in Bitcoin to the balance sheet for the firm, which prompted traders to see the company's stock as a proxy for the world's largest cryptocurrency. Strategy's market capitalization soon soared along with Bitcoin's rise. Now, a flood of other copycats have entered the market. In addition to Bitcoin, there are treasury companies for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Sui, Ethena, and now WLFI. All pitch their companies' stock as a proxy for the cryptocurrencies they hold and a way for traditional investors to gain exposure to crypto. 'One small step for mankind, one giant leap for WLFI,' said the X account for World Liberty Financial, announcing the raise. Zach Witkoff, CEO of World Liberty and son of President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, will become chairman of the board of directors at ALT5 Sigma. Eric Trump, son of the president and cofounder of World Liberty, will also join the board, and Zak Folkman, the crypto company's COO, will become a board observer. World Liberty was the lead investor in the raise. Other investors weren't disclosed. A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial declined to comment. World Liberty Financial's move into the public markets is the Trump family's latest expansion of its crypto empire. President Trump and first lady Melania Trump have their own memecoins. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have not only backed World Liberty but also spun up their own Bitcoin mining firm. And Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly traded company that encompasses Trump's social media site, Truth Social, has also recently pivoted to crypto and added $2 billion in Bitcoin to its balance sheet. This story was originally featured on
WIRED
3 hours ago
- Business
- WIRED
Trump Family–Backed World Liberty Financial Sets Up $1.5 Billion Crypto Treasury
Aug 12, 2025 2:30 PM World Liberty Financial has struck a deal that will turn a little-known company into a vehicle for betting on the price of its crypto coin. Photograph:World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency business cofounded by the Trump family, is creating a way for investors to speculate on the price of its self-branded coin, WLFI, through the US stock market. A cohort of investors led by World Liberty Financial is set to purchase 200 million shares in ALT5 Sigma Corporation, a Nasdaq-listed company. The proceeds will be used to build a $1.5 billion WLFI treasury, equating to roughly 7.5 percent of the coin's total supply. Eric Trump will join the ALT5 board of directors, which will be chaired by fellow World Liberty Financial cofounder Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, who was appointed special envoy to the Middle East by US president Donald Trump. ALT5 is marketed as a crypto payments company. But in practice, the deal will turn the stock into a sort of proxy for the WLFI coin, allowing investors to bet on the asset without the hassle and risk that comes with holding a crypto coin themselves. 'One small step for mankind, one giant leap for WLFI,' wrote World Liberty Financial in an X post. However, the arrangement has drawn criticism from those who regard it as an example of self-serving Wall Street gymnastics that can lead to losses among unsophisticated investors, even if it doesn't break any official rules. 'This is the classic Wall Street experience—meaning Wall Street gains your money, and you gain experience," claims Michael Green, chief strategist at asset management firm Simplify. 'The funding from the World Liberty Financial investment is being used to buy the product of World Liberty Financial: the token. What you are effectively doing is building a holding company whose sole objective is to create a treasury that can inflate the market capitalization of World Liberty Financial's token.' The deal has also reignited conflict of interest concerns that have trailed World Liberty Financial since Trump returned to the White House in January. A company affiliated with the president and his family controls both 22.5 percent of WLFI coins and a 40 percent equity stake in World Liberty Financial. In theory, a politically-motivated actor could curry favor with the US president by investing heavily in ALT5, thereby driving up the price of the stock—which sits on the World Liberty Financial balance sheet—and signaling demand for the WLFI coin, perhaps catalyzing further trading from which the Trump family would benefit. 'If you happen to visit Donald Trump and say, 'by the way, I love that company that you are involved with World Liberty Financial, I just bought a billion dollars of it,' my guess is you're going to get more attention than you otherwise might,' claims Green. ALT5 and World Liberty Financial did not respond immediately to a request for comment. 'The media's continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible and reinforce the public's distrust in what they read,' says Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary. 'Neither the President nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.' The Trump family began to tease the launch of World Liberty Financial last August, ahead of the 2024 US presidential election. Initially, it was unclear what services the business would provide; the pitch was simply to 'make finance great again.' Since then, World Liberty Financial has launched USD1, a so-called stablecoin tied in value to the US Dollar, and the WLFI coin. WLFI was initially meant to be used only for voting on changes to World Liberty Financial projects, not for trading. But in July, WLFI holders voted by a landslide to make the token tradeable on the secondary market. World Liberty Financial has not yet confirmed when trading will begin. The crypto treasury strategy that World Liberty Financial is pursuing was first popularized by Strategy—formerly MicroStrategy—a publicly traded software company that has accumulated a trove of bitcoin currently worth more than $74 billion. Strategy has long traded at a value that far exceeds its bitcoin holdings. Since Trump was reelected in November on a staunchly pro-crypto platform, copycat treasury companies have flooded US public markets. In the last few months, figures including Brandon Lutnick, the son of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, and David Bailey, a bitcoin evangelist who reportedly advised Trump on crypto policy, have launched their own respective bitcoin treasury vehicles. Two Nasdaq-listed companies with links to China also recently raised hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire a combination of bitcoin and Trump's memecoin. '[Strategy] has been the best performing stock of any other on the public market since that first bitcoin purchase. Naturally, other companies are attracted to that return profile,' Bill Papanastasiou, director of equity research at analyst house KBW, told WIRED earlier in the year. ALT5, with its newly-formed WLFI treasury, is part of this broader phenomenon. But unlike the rest, the underlying coin is not yet publicly tradable. 'World Liberty Financial is declaring that its token, which originally was supposed to be a governance-only token, is now going to be liquid and tradable. As a result, it's very important to create an entity that will buy that token anytime it starts to fall in value,' alleges Green. 'That's really what's happening.' Others are less skeptical of the economic principles beneath the crypto treasury companies; the opportunity to expand the amount of crypto they hold per share by earning yield on treasury assets, marketing derivatives and issuing convertible debt, they say, justifies the inflated valuations. 'It's sort of anathema to everything I learned as a value investor (...) but I realized there's a real fundamental thesis to why these can and should trade [at a premium to the value of their treasuries],' says Cosmo Jiang, general partner at crypto investment firm Pantera Capital, which has invested in a number of crypto treasury companies. 'They actually remind me a lot of banks, if you boil it down. A bank has a pile of deposits and then goes out and tries to generate yield on those deposits.' 'I'm a bit bullish on these vehicles,' says Thomas Braziel, co-founder of investment firm 507 Capital. 'I'm not sure yet why anybody would be that worried (...) A bubble, maybe it makes a headline, but I don't think it's accurate.' But even investors who see promise in the crypto treasury strategy recognize a risk associated with the extent of the Trump family's entanglements with the industry, which they fear could result in political blowback if the Democratic party were to return to power. 'The biggest risk to me in crypto right now—if you're a crypto bro or bull—is the unabashed pocket-lining done by the Trump family,' claims Braziel. 'For Trump, if there's no conflict there's no interest.'
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Eric Trump joins World Liberty Financial treasury company before WLFI token launch
Eric Trump joins World Liberty Financial treasury company before WLFI token launch originally appeared on TheStreet. There are Bitcoin treasury companies, and there are Ethereum treasury companies. And then, there is the treasury company that Eric Trump just joined – which is setting up to establish a treasury built around the token powering the Trumps' crypto project before it even begins trading. Today, ALT5 Sigma announced it would be raising $1.5 billion to establish a treasury strategy to buy World Liberty Financial tokens, and would add Eric Trump to its board, along with World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff. As Coinage has covered, the Trumps are now majority owners in the DeFi project they launched called World Liberty Financial. The project raised more than half a billion dollars via its WLFI token sale — and has since announced the token will soon be tradeable. In an announcement, ALT5 Sigma said it plans to hold approximately 7.5% of the total supply of $WLFI tokens. The company, which was founded in 2018 and boasts a market cap of around $120 million, has been actively involved in crypto via its payments businesses. The Nasdaq-listed stock traded 6% higher Monday morning after the announcement, before flipping into the red to trade 14% lower in the afternoon. Trading activity in these publicly traded treasury companies have been sporadic during announcements. Even Sharplink Gaming, the Ethereum treasury company backed by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, saw shares re-trace 90% just weeks after their announcement when they launched earlier this summer. World Liberty Financial has signaled that its WLFI tokens will begin trading soon, after a community vote approved unlocking them for early backers. Eric Trump joins World Liberty Financial treasury company before WLFI token launch first appeared on TheStreet on Aug 12, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Aug 12, 2025, where it first appeared. Sign in to access your portfolio
CNBC
9 hours ago
- Business
- CNBC
World Liberty Financial co-founders on $1.5 billion digital coin deal, growth of USD1 stablecoin
Zach Witkoff, World Liberty Financial co-founder and CEO and ALT5 Sigma incoming chairman, and Zak Folkman, World Liberty Financial co-founder and COO and ALT5 Sigma incoming board observer, join 'Squawk Box' to discuss news of World Liberty Financial using ALT5 Sigma Corporation to raise $1.5 billion for the purchase of its WLFI token, the economics of USD1, future of stablecoins, and more.
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
World Liberty Financial token valued at $0.20 in Trump crypto project's ALT5 treasury deal
World Liberty Financial's deal with ALT5 Sigma Corporation has put a value on WLFI, the Trump-backed DeFi project's token, for the first time since its sale last year. On Monday, ALT5 announced plans to pivot to become a so-called crypto treasury company, selling 200,000 new shares and using the proceeds to buy up the $1.5 billion worth of WLFI. The firm will swap half of the newly-issued shares directly for WLFI held by World Liberty Financial in a deal that values the token at $0.20, Matt Morgan, ALT5's chief investment officer, told DL News. It's not clear if World Liberty Financial is the only participant swapping WLFI tokens for shares. The firm said that several other unnamed institutional investors and venture capital firms participated in the share sale. It's the first time that WLFI has received a valuation since World Liberty Financial sold $550 million worth tokens to investors between October and March. At the time, investors paid varying prices for WLFI depending on how early in the sale they bought it. Large WLFI holders include Tron founder Justin Sun, who bought $75 million worth during the token sale. On its launch, WLFI was programmed so that buyers couldn't trade it, meaning that there was no way for the market to value the token. Conflict of interest The deal also highlights the growing crypto treasury company trend. Michael Saylor's Strategy was a trailblazer in this regard. The firm has issued debt or shares to buy Bitcoin since 2020, a ploy which has seen its shares skyrocket by over 3,500% since. Over the past year, a new wave of crypto treasury companies have copied Saylor's playbook on the back of a favourable crypto regulatory environment under the Trump administration. Many of these companies issue debt or shares to buy up their cryptocurrency of choice, and often emerge through reverse mergers with struggling publicly traded companies. Sometimes there's a conflict of interest between the treasury companies and the issuers of the crypto asset they buy. Tron Inc, a crypto treasury company that says it will buy up TRX, the native token of the Tron blockchain, has Weike Sun on its board, the father of Justin Sun. The firm listed the father-son relationship among its potential conflicts of interest in its S-3 filing last month. As a part of ALT5's crypto treasury swerve, the firm added several World Liberty Financial executives and backers to its board of directors. They include World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff, the project's COO Zak Folkman, and Eric Trump, President Donald Trump's son. All three new appointees hold WLFI and therefore have a financial interest in the token's value. Morgan said he's not at liberty to comment on matters that may involve commercially sensitive information relating to his role or ALT5 when asked about the potential conflict of interest of the board appointments. Trading the token The WLFI token is designed to govern World Liberty Financial. Those who hold the token can vote on changes to the protocol, its creators said. The project makes clear that it isn't a decentralised autonomous organisation, a type of crypto collective popular among DeFi projects. In July, WLFI holders voted to make the token tradable after the question was put to them by the project's creators. World Liberty Financial said in an X post that the token could begin trading as soon as the end of August. Tim Craig is DL News' Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@
