Plans of the old president Donald Trumpthe eldest sons, Donald Jr. And Ericto launch a crypto startup, has set off alarm bells even among its most loyal industry allies, according to a new report In Policy.
The two brothers have spent the past few weeks touting World Liberty Financial, their soon-to-launch cryptocurrency company shrouded in secrecy.
But a series of incidents, including the hacking of Trump family members by scammers and concerns about World Liberty’s deep ties to a blockchain company that lost $2 million due to security lapses, have led some to think they should pack everything up before starting.
“This is a huge mistake,” said Nic Carter, a partner at crypto venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures and a Trump backer. Policy. “It appears that Trump’s inner circle is taking advantage of his recent embrace of crypto in a somewhat naive way, and frankly, it seems like they are burning through a lot of the goodwill that has been built thus far with industry.”
Scammers are already storming the doors. Earlier this week, Trump’s daughter-in-law and daughter have been hacked and their X accounts were used to promote a crypto token supposedly from Don Jr. and Eric’s startup. This forced the company to do damage control, alerting people not to “click on links or purchase shared tokens from their profile.”
According to Coindesk, this is at least the third time a token with dubious claims about ties to Trump has been promoted. Infamous pharmaceutical brother 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 cap of $155 at its peak, fell 95%. in a single day last month, when Eric clarified that no official Trump crypto had been launched.
Then there are concerns about the World Liberty Financial team. Coindesk got documents showing the Trump brothers’ company circulating a white paper describing a borrowing and lending service similar to Dough Finance, a blockchain application that has been hacked for $2 million in July. World Liberty Financial lists the four people who started Dough Finance as team members. One of them, Zachary Folkman, previously ran a pickup artist platform called “Date Hotter Girls.”
The since-deleted code from World Liberty Financial, which Coindesk found on Github, also appears to come directly from Dough Finance.
Faced with these concerns, the father of the Trump siblings promised to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the world” if he took back the White House in November, leading to accusations that his crypto policies could benefit his family.
“Maybe it doesn’t shake things up for most people, but if this thing gets hacked or if regular people lose money or if it opens the door for the SEC to investigate the team, it just appears to be downside risk,” Carter, the Trump-backing crypto VC, said Policy.
A crypto industry insider in Washington, who spoke to the publication on condition of anonymity, also said he had a “long list of concerns” about how Trump’s crypto project could damage reputation of the industry.