On Monday, former president Donald Trump renewed his calls to transform the United States into a “crypto capital” and promoted his new crypto family business venture, World Liberty Financial. The firm hopes to push back against a "rigged" financial system and is being unironically steered by Trump's 18-year-old son, "DeFi visionary" Barron Trump. Trump's other sons, Don Jr. and Eric Trump, are also involved in the project, along with Trump himself, who serves as the company's "Chief Crypto Advocate."

“The whitelist for eligible persons is officially open – this is your chance to be part of this historic moment,” Trump said in a message broadcast to 91 million followers on his Twitter (X) account. The post had 1 million views at the time of writing.

“Backed by Donald J. Trump, we will onboard the next wave of users into the future of finance,” World Liberty Financial said in its announcement.

The venture sports the tagline “Get ready to be DeFiant,” a play on decentralized finance, which fuses together financial services and blockchain technology.

In the past, Trump's promotion of his family businesses has sparked concerns about conflicts of interest and potential ethics violations. As the Republican presidential nominee, if Trump ascends to the White House, he will have the authority to sign executive bills on crypto that would potentially benefit his family's crypto business. An estimated 70% of tokens from World Liberty Financial will be allocated to the founders and company insiders, which include members of Trump's family. Ethics watchdogs say that the Trump family's stake in the crypto venture raises a raft of concerns if Trump holds undue power over U.S. crypto policies, allowing the family to make direct financial gains from his presidency.

Despite declaring bitcoin a "scam" currency in the past, the former president has in recent months endorsed digital assets amid an influx of crypto campaign dollars. Public Citizen, a D.C.-based watchdog group, says that the crypto sector has already poured $119 billion into the 2024 elections, and that number is only expected to grow as the election accelerates.

Speaking at the annual Bitcoin Conference in Nashville this year, Trump promised to fulfill myriad wishes of the crypto industry, including a long-running campaign to unseat the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler. Crypto executives have rebuked the head of the federal agency for his posture of "regulation by enforcement" and string of high-profile lawsuits against prominent crypto companies. Last week, Gensler was grilled by Republican congressman Tom Emmer, who summarized the industry's antipathy toward the SEC's recent enforcement actions: "We could not have had a more historically destructive, or lawless, chairman of the SEC." However, as the legislative branch pursues bipartisan efforts to regulate the industry, Gensler has been praised by some Democrats for going after fraudulent actors in the nascent industry.