Reuters: Trump family controls at least 60% of World Liberty Financial through new holding company

When World Liberty Financial raised more than $500 million, industry experts pointed out that the family of former US President Donald Trump took control of the crypto business and seized most of the funds with governance terms that favored insiders, according to Reuters. The project is billed as a "DeFi platform" and claims to allow users to bypass banks and directly use cryptocurrencies to obtain financial services. However, the investigation found that the platform has not yet been publicly operated and the team size is extremely limited.

Despite this, World Liberty announced in mid-March that it had raised $550 million by selling governance tokens. Reuters calculations show that most of the sales occurred after Trump's victory in November last year, and the WLFI token only gives holders voting rights to modify the project code and cannot be traded publicly. In January of this year, the details of the World Liberty website changed, showing that the two co-founders, Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, had transferred control to an entity in which the Trump family holds a 60% stake. So far, the Trump family can obtain 75% of the net proceeds from the token sale and 60% of the platform's operating income. According to this calculation, approximately US$400 million in financing has now belonged to the Trump family, leaving only 5% (approximately US$27.5 million) for platform construction.