Who is behind World Liberty Financial, Trump’s new crypto?

Donald Trump has joined World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency project advised by his children and run by fraudsters and executives from failed and hacked projects. 

The protocol is a thin wrapper around borrowing-lending protocol Aave, which resembles the earlier Dough Finance.

CoinDesk reporting has suggested that the project’s WLFI governance token will be non-transferable and will reserve 70% of the supply for project insiders — a truly massive amount that raises significant concerns about whether it can ever truly be ‘decentralized’ as it promises.

This number has been challenged in an X Spaces with the team after claims that 63% will be sold to the public. 

Several team members referenced ease of use and earning yield on stablecoins as justifications for the project’s existence and, somewhat uniquely, the governance token for this project is intended to be non-transferable.

Here, we run down the major parties involved with the project and why it could be one of the first times that a former United States president is willing to endorse a project explicitly aimed at disrupting the country’s financial system. 

Trump family members and World Liberty Financial

Donald Trump, the financial fraudster, sexual predator, and former president, has flip-flopped on cryptocurrency, changing from “it just seems like a scam” to a full-throated endorsement of both this project and a willingness to license his image for NFT projects.

He is reportedly listed as a ‘Chief Crypto Advocate’ for World Liberty Financial.

Meanwhile, Eric Trump, who previously signed the Stormy Daniels hush money reimbursement checks to Michael Cohen, has decided that he is ready to pursue a future as the project’s ‘Web3 Ambassador.’ 

Donald Trump Jr., who previously threatened GOP lawmakers for refusing to help his father perform an autogolpe, is also reportedly signed up as another ‘Web3 Ambassador.’

Finally, Barron Trump, whom Martin Shkreli has previously accused of being involved with the DJT token — though that was never proven — is now a ‘DeFi visionary‘ for World Liberty Financial.

Dough Finance is basically World Liberty Financial

World Liberty Financial appears to be a fork of the recently hacked Dough Finance; both World Liberty Financial and Dough Finance reportedly rely on Aave for the actual borrowing and lending. 

The World Liberty Financial team includes several key team members from Dough Finance, including Zachary Folkman, Chase ‘Hero’ Herro, Octavian Lojnita, and ‘0xboga.’

Additionally, screenshots obtained from the since-deleted code for World Liberty Financial by CoinDesk show a striking similarity to Dough Finance.

Lojnita, who is the Smart Contracts Lead, previously worked at Dough Finance.

The pseudonymous ‘0xboga,’ who is listed as a front-end developer, also previously worked on Dough Finance.

Folkman was a pickup artist who hosted seminars for desperate men; he was additionally one of the people who built Dough Finance and is now one of the faces of this project. 

Herro, who previously went to prison for drug-related charges, is also the founder of a defunct crypto trading firm Pacer Capital, and was one of the people who built Dough Finance. He is now also one of the faces of World Liberty Financial. 

Folkman and Herro also worked together on ‘mastermind’ groups and ran a YouTube channel where they would show themselves trading cryptocurrency and offering ‘entrepreneurial’ advice. 

Subify quietly shut down

Herro and Folkman are also the founders of Subify, which purports to be a “no censorship” subscription platform that “will never demonetize or censor you.”

Subify’s terms and conditions refer to it as a Puerto Rican limited liability company. However, a review of Puerto Rico’s corporate registry says that the firm Subify LLC, which was founded by Folkman, has been canceled since the end of 2023. 

Protos attempted to reach out to Subify to clarify this issue; unfortunately, the email listed on the website was undeliverable, and the phone number is now associated with a plumber.

Protos was able to send a message on Instagram to the Subify account but has yet to receive a response.

Despite these apparent issues with Subify, the website it created for Logan Paul appears to still be up and still proudly proclaims that it is “Powered by Subify.” 

Protos tried to send an email to the Maverick Club to determine if these issues with Subify will affect it, but that email was also undeliverable.

Maverick by Logan Paul LLC, the entity that previously operated this Maverick Club, has been renamed to Better Call Paul LLC.

Subify seems to have quietly stopped operating, with no mention of the cessation on its X account, its TikTok, or its Instagram. 

World Liberty Financial Advisors

The project has talked to several lawyers in the crypto space. Alex Golubitsky, who works at MetaLeX Pro, is an advisor to the project and was reportedly listed as “Legal Counsel” in a whitepaper that CoinDesk reviewed. MetaLeX Pro also offered advice, and it originally disclosed it would receive 1.3% of the token supply. It has since claimed it “will not be retaining any tokens.”

Additionally, Rafael Yakobi, a managing partner at The Crypto Lawyers, has been announced as an advisor.

CoinDesk has also reported some other Trump friends are involved, including Steve Witkoff, a property developer whose role is reportedly ‘Institutional Investment.’

Witkoff’s son Zach is also involved, and his role is reportedly listed as ‘Intelligence.’ Zach’s LinkedIn says he is the president of Witkoff Capital, which is described as a “family office with a focus on Blockchian [sic], PropTech, FinTech, and consumer products.” 

The project has been announcing a significant number of other advisors through X. These include Sandy Peng, the co-founder of Ethereum Layer-2 Scroll.

Other cryptocurrency projects are also represented here, including ‘ogle’ the founder of yet-to-be-launched Glue Blockchain, and Alexei Dulub of ‘Web3 Antivirus.’

Corey Caplan of Dolomite, another ‘DeFi’ lending platform, was initially announced as an advisor, but during a recent Spaces was announced as a team member. 

Luke Pearson, a general partner at Polychain Capital has also been announced as an advisor. Some will remember Polychain for its role as an investor in Luna before its untimely collapse. 

Endorsements

Even folks who are not advisors to this platform find its existence exciting. Jeremy Allaire, the co-founder and CEO of Circle, the second-largest USD-pegged stablecoin, quote posted a World Liberty Financial post about stablecoins to say, ‘Aligned.’

Others, like Gabriel Shapiro, another partner at MetaLex Pro, have stated that he believes it’s “been a very thorough legal process with an AmLaw 50 law firm also advising” and added that he believes it’s “some kind of lightweight non-custodial feeder into Aave with a locked governance token.”

The Spaces with the former President

On the evening of Monday, September 16th, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Barron Trump, Steve Witkoff, Alex Witkoff, Zach Witkoff, Chase Herro, Zach Folkman, and other members of the World Liberty Financial team participated in an X Spaces hosted by RugRadio.

During the course of the call, the former president did not mention World Liberty Financial nor provide any additional insight into his role with the project. 

Trump Jr. emphasized the uncertainty despite the fact that they’re working with the “best” lawyers. He also noted that he has received education on how to use cryptocurrency from Folkman.

Herro noted the project was for the common man and stated the project focuses on “liquidity” and “accessibility,” presumably meaning that World Liberty Financial intends to be easier to use than Aave, though tangents about stablecoins make it somewhat less clear what is intended. Herro claims to want to “restructure where the American debt is being held.”

Folkman described the platform as being targeted at folks who already have cryptocurrency assets but who have yet to realize the potential to lend and borrow against those assets. Much of his explanation focused on how this platform would be somehow more simple to use, and also talked about generating yields on stablecoins.

Read more: Donald Trump sells the clothes off his back in latest NFT promotion

Folkman also described a time when he had to explain Aave to Eric Trump, a “technically savvy guy.”

Eric Trump’s answers also focused on usability and he mentioned how he wants to run a golf club where you can pay entirely with cryptocurrency. 

Towards the very end of the X Spaces, the team finally described the token, noting that it intends to sell governance tokens that will be non-transferrable and that in the United States only accredited investors will be able to invest.

This will be enforced with a “whitelist KYC process.” The team additionally claimed that it will have 63% of the tokens sold to the public. It additionally claims that 20% has been set aside for the team. 

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