The Trumps’ New Crypto Money Maker: Deals With Themselves
The $750 million circular transaction—with the same party as buyer and seller—is more common in the crypto world than in traditional finance
The Trump family engineered a new deal for its flagship crypto venture that stands to earn over half a billion dollars.
One unusual element: Trump-backed companies are on both sides of the deal.
Crypto has become the Trump family’s dominant business interest, overshadowing the real-estate empire the president spent half a century developing.
At the center of those crypto riches is World Liberty Financial, the Trump-family vehicle launched last year. In a move earlier this month, World Liberty took over a pain–treatment-turned-payments firm, which then bought World Liberty’s recently created cryptocurrency, according to public disclosures.
The publicly listed firm, Alt5 Sigma, sold shares and raised $750 million in cash from outside investors to buy World Liberty’s cryptocurrency, dubbed WLFI. The deal will hand the Trump family a huge payday, around $500 million, since an entity it owns keeps up to three-quarters of any revenues from WLFI sales.
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