Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto project said that it raised $250 million in its second token sale, bringing the total amount of coins sold to $550 million.

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A cryptocurrency initiative associated with Donald Trump, known as World Liberty Financial, has raised $550 million following its second token sale. Investors from both the United States and abroad have participated, but the tokens cannot yet be resold and there is no profit sharing for holders at this stage. A Trump-affiliated entity is set to receive 75% of the net revenue from the project, which is branding itself as a crypto bank, though its exact function is still not clearly defined.

The project has reportedly purchased significant amounts of other cryptocurrencies and is in discussions with major exchanges such as Binance. There have also been reports of potential plans to launch a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin. The project has faced scrutiny regarding its structure and the involvement of the Trump family, especially given the high percentage of proceeds directed to Trump-affiliated entities.

Trump’s crypto project says it sold $550 million in tokens

President Trump's World Liberty financial token, raising more cash in its second sale. Mackenzie Sagalos joins us now with more. Good morning. Hey, good morning, Joe. So one of Donald Trump's crypto projects has now raised $550 million after completing its second token sale. Investors, both from the US and abroad, have poured cash into World Liberty Financial, but at this point, they can't resell their tokens yet, and there's no profit sharing. As for where all this cash is going, a Trump-affiliated entity is set to take home 75% of net revenue, including proceeds from this sale. Now, despite the project branding itself as a crypto bank where customers will be encouraged to borrow, lend, and invest in digital tokens, its exact purpose remains vague. Co-founder Zach Witkoff, son of billionaire US envoy Steve Witkoff, is quoted in the release as saying that World Liberty is on track to supercharge DeFi. Now, what we do know is that the project has been purchasing millions of dollars in tokens, including Ether and Tron. World Liberty is also reportedly in talks with Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. In fact, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump family has even explored taking a stake in the US arm of Binance. I never heard back from the White House after requesting comment on that last week, and World Liberty put out a post calling the information politically motivated and designed to harm the crypto industry. I'm just wondering what we're talking about. So, it would revolutionize DeFi, the decentralized finance. What's that look like exactly? What are we talking about here? Well, what they've promised is that this would be some sort of bank that would offer its users the ability to lend, borrow, earn yield, invest in certain cryptocurrencies, but the project isn't live yet. So, at this point, all we're looking at is $550 million that has been raised. And it also comes at a time where the Trump family has other crypto projects, those meme tokens, for example. Right. I'm just wondering whether, you know, I know that critics would say it's another, it's like a sneaker, or like a gold-plated sneaker to raise more money for Trump, Inc. But, you know, I think there's some credibility with Whitkoff's son being involved. Is it, if it wasn't the Trump family, would this be something that people said, yeah, that's a viable thing to try and do as a startup? Well, some of the reporting from Bloomberg shows that there have been conversations between World Liberty Financial and the Trump White House to potentially launch a U.S. dollar peg stablecoin. And so much of the conversation right now about what's innovative in the crypto industry are these stablecoin payment rails. So that could be interesting. That's one component of what's potentially being discussed. The other thing to keep in mind here, Joe, the majority shareholder of Binance, CZ, Changpeng Zhao, just got out of, you know, just finished his four-month sentence, got out of the halfway house in September. He has a net worth of $37 billion. He's also reportedly been involved in some of these discussions, though he denies that. I mean, those are the questions. Is it self-dealing? And you can go back to, should congresspeople be trading stocks too, because they can influence some of these things. Those would be the questions. If you can set up the policy for this ahead of time, should you be allowed to have stakes in some of these things? And to that point, you, at the end of February, you had the SEC say that meme tokens are not securities. And that was a couple of weeks after the meme token launches from the president and the first lady. 80% of proceeds go to the Trump organization and its affiliates, which, Joe, goes to your point about there being a lot of scrutiny around these projects, whether or not that's warranted. These are what some of the, you know, some of the facts that people are pointing to about the arrangement. So what is left of Binance? Well, quite a lot. It's still the largest centralized exchange on the planet. Even though, with those issues in mind, and I mean, there must've been fines, you went, what'd you say, a halfway house or something? So yeah, so its former CEO went to prison for four months, got out of a halfway house in September. It's now being led by Richard Tang. I'm actually doing a fireside chat with him in a couple hours, and I plan to ask him about- It's still the world's largest exchange. It is. It wields a great deal of power. And you know what's very interesting here is that even though Binance settled with the US, the DOJ and other federal regulators to the tune of $4.3 billion, they did not resolve issues with the SEC. But under Paul, well, I mean, soon to be Paul Atkins, we've just seen this shift in where a lot of the, or a lot of the litigation that was initially being pursued is being rolled back. And that might also be the case here. I haven't heard anything about what's going on with the SEC in its case against Binance.

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