Thoughts tagged "Donald Trump"

Short thoughts, notes, links, and musings by . RSS

This article is a great deep dive into some of the shady characters behind World Liberty Financial — Justin Sun among them, despite his recent efforts to distance himself from the project. (He likely hoped this interview would help, and it is a little friendly, but rightly points out his shadiness.)

“Justin Sun Is Blowing the Whistle on Trump's World Liberty”.
Jen Wieczner in Intelligencer.
World Liberty Financial has put $800 million in the president's pocket. Justin Sun made a huge investment — and was shocked by what he saw, reports Jen Wieczner.

Mapping Trump’s crypto empire on Last Week Tonight

My newest Citation Needed project made an appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver! It’s a work in progress, but you can see the new interactive version of my map of the Trump family’s crypto ventures at map.citationneeded.news.

John Oliver speaking on Last Week Tonight, gesturing to an overlay of my web of the Trump family’s crypto businesses. The subtitles say “keeping track of them have wound up making diagrams like this”.

The map contains hundreds of business entities and links to the Trump family (with more being added!), augmented with data from the president’s most recent financial filings to estimate how much money is flowing in. It will be queryable by other researchers and journalists.

Click any node or connection in the Trump crypto empire map to open its panel and view explanatory annotations and citations. Toggle the income overlay to see financial-disclosure figures from the most recent filings. Search for entities, or filter by category.

A screenshot of the map, with a side panel open showing Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. Side panel contents: Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust Intermediary Entity When Walter Shaub, then Director of the Office of Government Ethics, called on President Trump to divest from the Trump Organization during his first term, Trump instead transferred his operating businesses to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. Many had urged him to use a blind trust. Critics argued the DJT Revocable Trust fell far short of that standard: Trump remained the sole beneficiary, his son controlled the assets, and Trump could revoke the arrangement at any time. Shaub later commented that the arrangement was “meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective” and that “setting up a trust to hold his operating businesses adds nothing to the equation. This is not a blind trust—it’s not even close.” Established 2014 Sources ↗ Stenglein, Christine, "OGE Director warns Trump’s business plan insufficient", The Brookings Institution, January 11, 2017 ↗ Craig, Susanne, and Eric Lipton, "Trust Records Show Trump Is Still Closely Tied to His Empire", The New York Times, February 3, 2017 ↗ Kravitz, Derek, and Al Shaw, "Trump Lawyer Confirms President Can Pull Money From His Businesses Whenever He Wants", ProPublica, April 4, 2017 ←controlled by Donald Trump Jr. According to a 2024 regulatory filing, Donald Trump Jr. "is the sole trustee and has sole voting and

Subscriber support is what makes data projects like the Trump empire map and Tech Influence Watch possible — work that goes beyond the newsletter itself. You can join them!

The scale of Trump's pay-for-access scheme outlined by the Times is mindblowing. Crypto contributions resulting in business deals with the Trump family crypto businesses, oil companies buying influence and later reaping benefits from friendly policies, and a $1 million pardon.

The article only mentions Crypto​.com's $10 million contribution to Trump's super PAC, but doesn't mention that after Trump took office, the SEC dropped their lawsuit against the company. His Truth Social company is now partnering with them to sell crypto ETFs.

When the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Eric Schiermeyer heard that President Trump was holding small group dinners with major donors, he saw opportunity. Mr. Schiermeyer reached out to a lobbyist with connections in Mr. Trump’s orbit, who arranged for him to attend a dinner with the president at his private Mar-a-Lago club on March 1 in exchange for donations to a pro-Trump PAC called MAGA Inc. totaling $1 million. The personal and corporate donations were among dozens of seven- and eight-figure contributions to MAGA Inc. from crypto and other interests revealed in a campaign finance filing on Thursday night that hinted at the access Mr. Trump accords those willing to pay. At the dinner, Mr. Schiermeyer, who had never given a federal political donation before, presented an idea for a cryptocurrency called “U.S.A. Token” that would be distributed to every citizen, according to interviews and a flier he distributed to attendees that sets out details of the proposal. He hoped it could be supported through a federal contract with his company.
Cryptocurrency interests, which have benefited from the Trump administration’s dismantling of a yearslong government crackdown and from the Trump family’s financial interest in the industry, appear to have been the most generous industry, accounting for nearly $45 million in donations to MAGA Inc.An affiliate of the exchange Crypto.com gave $10 million, while the crypto services company Blockchain.com donated $5 million. The venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who are heavily invested in crypto, gave $3 million each. Ondo Finance, which has a partnership with the Trump family’s crypto company, donated $2.1 million to MAGA Inc., on top of $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
“Donor List Suggests Scale of Trump's Pay-for-Access Operation”.
Kenneth P. Vogel and David Yaffe-Bellany in The New York Times.
A new disclosure shows how corporations and individuals, including many in the crypto business, wrote big checks while seeking favor from the president.

Trump speaking to crypto executives while signing the GENIUS Act stablecoin bill: “I got you guys out of so much trouble... They’ve got plenty of cash, and it’s great that you’re on our side.”

Note: I retained Trump’s comments about Biden to avoid taking his statement out of context, but his claim that Biden “dropped all charges” against crypto executives during his (or Harris’s) campaign is false.

Trump is seeking to direct Americans' retirement funds to a sector in which he and his family are heavily invested.

“Donald Trump set to open US retirement market to crypto investments”.
Jamie John, Stephanie Stacey, and Antoine Gara in Financial Times.
Donald Trump is preparing to open the $9tn US retirement market to cryptocurrency investments, gold, and private equity in a move that would spur a radical shift in the way Americans’ savings are managed.
Proposal: Make $WLFI Token Tradable General Jul 4 1m WLFI_Team 1d Summary This proposal is presented to solicit community input and formally initiate the tradability of the token. This would mark a major milestone in the development of the World Liberty Financial ecosystem and opens the door for broader community participation, access, and protocol development. ⸻ Proposal Objectives • Make $WLFI transferable, thereby enabling broader community access to governance participation, whether through peer to peer transactions or secondary markets • Transition the WLFI ecosystem from closed to open participation • Enable greater token utility access • Begin the next phase of community ownership and engagement • Align long-term token incentives with protocol adoption and success ⸻ Early Supporter Unlocking • A portion of WLFI supply was sold to early supporters • A portion of these tokens will be eligible to be unlocked upon launch of tradability • The remainder of the tokens will be subject to a second vote by the community to determine the unlock and release schedule • Founders, team, and advisor tokens will not be unlocked initially and will be subject to a longer unlock schedule than early supporters to demonstrate long-term commitment and alignment with the success of the protocol • Timing and any eligibility requirements for unlock to be determined subsequently.
Why Now? Over the last year, WLFI has made significant progress across product development, ecosystem partnerships, and brand awareness. With strong demand from community members and partners, many community members have said that the timing is right to make WLFI tradable and initiate this next chapter in our collective journey. ⸻ Governance & Community Role Following the vote to make the token tradable, WLFI’s governance framework will enable more token holders to participate directly in protocol decisions. This includes voting on emissions, ecosystem incentives, and future treasury actions. This proposal is the first step in handing greater influence to the community. ⸻ Next Steps (If Approved) • Execute and enable transferability • Initiate distribution for eligible early supporters • Begin community governance with a second vote on remaining unlocks • Continue ecosystem expansion and partner integrations ⸻ Voting Options • YES: Proceed with WLFI tradability • NO: Maintain current token non-transferability and closed network status ⸻ Final Note This is a defining moment for World Liberty Financial. The foundation has been laid, the community is growing, and we’re ready to move forward. Launching WLFI as a tradable token brings us one step closer to building a more open, transparent, and powerful financial system. Let’s build it together. — The WLFI Team

The team behind Trump's World Liberty Financial project has proposed lifting restrictions on the WLFI "governance token" to make it tradeable. I predicted shortly after its launch that if Trump succeeded in gutting the SEC, he would do this.

This would lift the substantial restrictions on the token (non-US or accredited investors only, locked tokens with no secondary sales) that were aimed at sidestepping attention from the previous SEC, and could be enormously lucrative for Trump.

It could also be enormously lucrative for early buyers like Justin Sun or the Emirati Aqua 1 Foundation, who hold $75 million and $100 million worth of WLFI, respectively.

Prior to the Trump administration, a token like this would likely have been considered an unregistered security by the SEC, and its sales illegal offerings.

I think this is a more or less up-to-date map of the businesses, LLCs, and people associated with the Trump family crypto projects.

Extremely tangled diagram depicting relationships between LLCs, major companies, the Trump family, Bill Zanker and various other individuals, and various crypto projects including the $TRUMP memecoin, NFTs, World Liberty Financial, etc.

The relative separation between World Liberty Financial and the Trump memecoin projects, both of which are trying to develop defi trading platforms, may help to explain the chaos around the latter’s wallet launch announcement yesterday.

It is very plausible to me that Trump has sold his likeness to so many separate projects, not to mention his sons also using the “Trump” branding, that no one really knows what’s going on in aggregate.

However, it’s still not fully clear to me how the memecoin end of the business could launch a wallet using Trump’s name and likeness without the sons’ knowledge unless the original licensing agreement for the memecoin was extremely broad.

This diagram is of course limited to what is publicly disclosed, and you’ll see a few places where links are uncertain, and where LLCs’ operators are partially or completely unknown. The flow of money is also a very partial accounting.