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Months later Donald Trump and his eldest sons were found responsible for civil fraud associated with a family business, the Trumps have sparked new concerns about a growing family business: cryptocurrency.
THE Republican presidential candidate adopted a new love for cryptocurrency – he owns over a million dollars in digital currency – and his sons, Don Jr and Eric, are planning to create a crypto startup called World Liberty Financial. But the plan worries Trump’s crypto allies.
The X accounts of Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump, and Lara Trump, Eric’s wife who co-chairs the Republican National Committee, were hacked earlier this week, with messages directing users to fake links to the project, according to Liberty Global Financial.
World Liberty Financial then warned X users to avoid clicking on links shared from these profiles. The two women are not involved in the crypto project.
Shortly after the incident, Nic Carter, a Trump supporter and general partner at cryptoasset firm Castle Island Ventures, advised the startup to stop in its tracks.
“Is there anything we as crypto-twitter can do collectively to stop the launch of the Global Freedom Coin? I think this really hurts Trump’s electoral prospects, especially if he gets hacked…he’s also an obvious target for the SEC,” Carter wrote on X.
“At best it is an unnecessary distraction, at worst it is a huge embarrassment and a source of (additional) legal problems.”
Carter then said bluntly Policy that the startup was a “huge mistake”.
“It seems like Trump’s inner circle is just taking advantage of his recent embrace of crypto in a somewhat naive way, and frankly, it seems like they’re burning through a lot of the goodwill that’s been built up until now. now with the industry,” he said. said.
The hacks took place days after the Trump family started promote the new project. The former president issued a video on his X account, affirming his ambition for the United States to become “the crypto capital of the planet”. Although she joined X just two months ago, World Liberty Financial has over 50,000 subscribers to date.
But some experts have warned that such a large pre-launch promotion could cause problems in the long run.
Austin Campbell, a blockchain expert and assistant professor at NYU Stern School of Business, also shared his concerns regarding the deployment of World Liberty Financial.
“It’s a very typical strategy of smaller operators or more amateur operations in the crypto space to try to generate a lot of hype before revealing the details,” he said. Policy. “It makes them vulnerable to all kinds of nonsense.”
Another cryptocurrency insider source, who remained anonymous, said Policy about having “a long list of concerns” about how the project could jeopardize the industry’s reputation.
Trump has done an about-face on cryptocurrency in recent years. After leaving the White House in 2021, Trump referred to Bitcoin as “scam.” He explained: “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing with the dollar…I want the dollar to be the currency of the world.”
But in recent months, the former president has become a staunch supporter. In May, his campaign announced that it would accept cryptocurrency contributions as part of a broader effort to build a so-called “Crypto Army» before the November elections.
Although official plans for the startup have not been announced, CoinDesk obtained parts of a white paper for the project.
The document calls World Liberty Financial “a borrowing and lending service strikingly similar to Dough Finance,” a blockchain application that was hacked for $2 million in July.
Four people who built Dough Finance are named members of the World Liberty Financial team, along with all of Trump’s sons – even NYU freshman Barron, who the white paper calls a “DeFi visionary.” ”, reported CoinDesk.
The startup will also offer a non-transferable governance token. Although World presents itself as a “decentralized“, the whitepaper revealed that 70 percent of its tokens will be “held by the founders, team and service providers.”
Despite the recent hacks, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial said Policy : “We take safety very seriously and place it above all else. »