Donald Trump and his family appeared in a live broadcast on Monday evening to unveil a hotly-anticipated new cryptocurrency venture – but revealed almost nothing about what it will actually entail.
In an interview with crypto news podcast Rug Radio on Monday evening, the former president hawked his new “World Liberty Financial” project, which has previously been billed as involving “digital real estate”.
His eldest son Donald Jr described it as “the start of a financial revolution”, while his younger son Eric said it would challenge the power of big traditional banks by making crypto accessible to ordinary Americans.
Yet despite much fanfare, neither they nor their business partners revealed almost anything concrete about the project, save that it will be controlled via a non-transferrable “governance token” which will be sold to accredited investors.
Nor did Trump’s youngest son Barron, 18, who has been described as the project’s “visionary”, ever make an appearance, despite excited promises from his brothers and from the host, Farokh Sarmad.
Experts described the elder Trump’s decision to promote his sons’ crypto business even while seeking an office that would give him the power to regulate the crypto industry as a serious potential conflict of interest, adding to his long history of mingling official power with his personal business interests.
“[Biden and Harris] have been very hostile to crypto, extremely hostile, like nobody can believe,” said Trump, who as recently as 2021 called Bitcoin a “scam” and “a disaster waiting to happen”.
“My attitude is different… [crypto] suffer suffers from some credibility lapses; some things were done or not done. But it’s very young, and very growing, and if we don’t do it, China’s gonna do it. If we don’t do it, other countries are gonna do it.”
He credited his sons, and especially Barron, “more than anything else” for opening his eyes to the potential of crypto, saying that he was impressed by their “level of enthusiasm”.
“Barron knows so much about this,” he said. “Barron’s a young guy, but he knows – he talks about his [crypto] wallet, he’s got four wallets or something, and I’ll say ‘what is a wallet?’ But he knows it inside out.
“It’s almost like younger people know it a lot better than older people. But I have a lot of respect for them. They’ve shown great judgement, all of them.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
