See All<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\nSun, who was raised in China by middle-class journalist parents and earned a master\u2019s degree at the University of Pennsylvania, built his fortune by launching his own blockchain, Tron, which became popular in Asia as a fast and cheap way to move U.S.-dollar stablecoins. Tron\u2019s digital coin, $TRX, with a market cap of some $31 billion, is the eighth-most-valuable cryptocurrency in the world. According to Forbes, Sun\u2019s net worth is an estimated $8.5 billion, making him richer than George Soros and not far behind Bill Ackman. (Sun suggests he\u2019s worth more than that; when Bloomberg estimated his wealth at $12.5 billion, Sun sued.)<\/p>\n
In his ascendancy, Sun had not escaped the attention of the U.S. government. In March 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Biden administration charged him and his companies with fraud, alleging market manipulation and the unregistered offer and sale of securities. Sun was charged simultaneously with Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Akon, and Soulja Boy, who were accused of illegally hawking Tron\u2019s cryptocurrency without disclosing Sun paid them to do so. The SEC also accused Sun of artificially inflating the price of $TRX by making \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of essentially fake trades among his own accounts \u2014 and of lying: \u201cSun materially misrepresented the truth about the touting campaign to deceive investors,\u201d according to the SEC. Later that year, Tron made headlines for reportedly being used by terrorist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, putting additional heat on Sun, who had reportedly avoided traveling to the U.S. for years out of fear he\u2019d be arrested. (Tron later took measures to better police its platform.)<\/p>\n
![\"TOPSHOT-HONG](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/fdf155efeeecee504aed299c448d51f846-sun-banana.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Sun eating a $6.2 million banana bought at auction from the artist Maurizio Cattelan in 2024. \u201cIt\u2019s still fresh.\u201d
\n Photo: Peter Parks\/AFP via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Now, on the eve of the presidential election, the three guys on the Zoom were offering Sun an interesting investment opportunity that, should Trump win a second term, might also conveniently help relieve this legal pressure. Don Jr. and Eric Trump were all in on the project, the three World Liberty founders said on the call. In fact, the Trump family, at the time, owned 75 percent of the business. The Trumps\u2019 passion for World Liberty, the founders told Sun, came from being \u201cdebanked,\u201d or off-loaded as clients, by JPMorgan and Capital One in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. They were committed to pursuing a crypto alternative for their wealth \u2014 a way to control their own money through uncensurable digital wallets. Trump would preside over a financial revolution enabling regular citizens to bypass banks and invest their assets freely across decentralized crypto platforms.<\/p>\n
World Liberty would build innovative projects that delivered on the new administration\u2019s ambitions. \u201cThey said they were the victims of those centralized controls,\u201d says Sun. \u201cI believe in the vision of what was presented.\u201d Sun, who has a libertarian streak (he became an Ayn Rand fan in graduate school), says he identified with fears of a \u201cvery big centralized power that eventually will enslave everyone.\u201d He liked the pitch enough that he was willing to overlook the founders\u2019 worrisome backgrounds.<\/p>\n
In November 2024, Sun transferred $30 million to World Liberty and came aboard as an adviser, receiving billions of yet-to-launch $WLFI coins \u2014 the key token in the company\u2019s future crypto ecosystem \u2014 in exchange. He was immediately the biggest investor in the project. Sun\u2019s involvement also gave World Liberty a halo of safety in the eyes of many other crypto investors. In the month before Sun invested, World Liberty had brought in only $21 million from other investors, a fraction of its target. After Sun\u2019s involvement was made public, money poured in (including another $15 million from Sun). World Liberty closed its initial sale in January 2025, having raised $300 million.<\/p>\n
Over the next year or so, Sun would come to believe he\u2019d made a colossal mistake. World Liberty would disappoint his expectations and those of many other investors: The decentralized crypto products it promised would largely never materialize; the money investors put in would remain mostly locked away from them; and the $WLFI cryptocurrency would crash, leaving many token holders with huge losses while the president and his partners made hundreds of millions in profits. Sun would be stripped of his tokens entirely. \u201cToday, the thing I regret the most is not only that my money got stuck but that my name is on the project,\u201d Sun says. \u201cI believe many other people also got harmed.\u201d In April 2026, he filed a lawsuit against World Liberty alleging fraud and breach of contract. When we spoke in June via Zoom, it was late in the evening in Hong Kong, where he lives. His background was a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, but when the screen faltered, I could see he was lying down, his head on a pillow. Wearing a deep-blue crewneck T-shirt, he drank water from a carafe as he walked me through his past and his time with World Liberty. Our conversation took place under the shadow of defamation claims World Liberty had recently made against Sun, and he seemed torn between wanting to condemn the company\u2019s actions and staying within the guardrails his lawyers had set for him. But he couldn\u2019t hide his outrage at World Liberty \u2014 for making a mockery of the principles it was purportedly founded on and for, in his eyes, essentially stealing his money in full public view. \u201cI never expected this to happen to me,\u201d says Sun. \u201cThis is the worst-case scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sun\u2019s account, and those of others who invested in and worked for the company, depict an enterprise that was partially inspired and de facto run by Herro \u2014 a man whose career might be characterized as a high-speed succession of shameless for-profit hustles. Sun and other investors describe how World Liberty soaked up hundreds of millions in investments based on the Trumps\u2019 involvement, then sat on the money. Outside investors, including Sun, always seemed to lose, while company insiders always won. \u201cI thought surely these people would not do what they did with such a public profile attached,\u201d says Sun. \u201cLooking back, I was wrong about that. Unfortunately, as alleged in the complaint, certain operators leveraged the Trump brand to profit through fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s financial disclosures reveal that, in 2025, his ventures brought in at least $2.2 billion with crypto accounting for more than half of that total. The largest individual element of that historic windfall \u2014 likely the best financial year of his life and the most profitable ever for any president \u2014 was World Liberty, which put some $800 million into Trump\u2019s pocket. While the Trumps were hands off on day-to-day matters \u2014 and Sun is careful to say his issues are not with the Trumps directly \u2014 they were the largest owners of the company and certainly the ones who decided its shape. \u201cNo president I can think of has ever exploited the office this way for their own personal monetary gain,\u201d says Don Fox, who served as general counsel and then acting director of the Office of Government Ethics under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. \u201cIn the post-Watergate era, nobody\u2019s gotten wealthy off the presidency, certainly not fabulously wealthy.\u201d Trump has also used his office to protect his investment, signing an executive order essentially instructing the SEC to go easy on crypto as soon as he was inaugurated and while World Liberty was still raising money, which, Fox adds, \u201cis a criminal offense\u201d for any executive-branch official except the president and the vice-president.<\/p>\n
Trump didn\u2019t start out a crypto booster. In 2019, he said he was \u201cnot a fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money.\u201d Trump argued they \u201ccan facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.\u201d Out of office, though, he seems to have been awakened to what crypto could do for him: It was popular with young men, a key part of his base, and the industry became an enthusiastic source of campaign contributions. He seems, too, to have recognized that it could make him much richer than he already was.<\/p>\n
![\"World](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9e08890f88477b7417076baa761d20fc92-folkman-herro.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n The Trump family teamed up with former pickup artist Zak Folkman, left, and self-described \u201cdirtbag\u201d Chase Herro to create crypto company World Liberty Financial prior to the 2024 election.
\n Photo: Adam Gray\/Bloomberg via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s sudden interest in crypto can be traced back to a seemingly serendipitous meeting with Chase Herro in 2023. As Herro tells the story, he bumped into Zach Witkoff that summer at the Witkoffs\u2019 golf resort, the Shell Bay Club, near Miami, and Zach offered to drive him around the course. \u201cLiterally, on the golf cart, we just started shooting the shit,\u201d Herro later told Fortune. They became fast friends. Zach introduced Herro to his father, Steve, and the elder Witkoff brokered a meeting between Herro and Trump.<\/p>\n
Sitting with Trump, then in exile at Mar-a-Lago, Herro needed to prove that there was real money in crypto \u2014 and that he, seemingly a nobody, was actually absurdly rich. Herro pulled out his phone and moved some $100 million in crypto coins from one wallet to another. Trump was sold. \u201cThat turned the lights on,\u201d says a former World Liberty adviser who has known Herro for several years. (The White House had no comment; a spokesperson for World Liberty said this \u201cstory is inaccurate\u201d but did not specify why.) From there, Trump began courting the crypto vote and receiving generous contributions from the industry. He declared he would make the U.S. \u201cthe crypto capital of the planet\u201d and branded himself the future \u201ccrypto president.\u201d He officially launched World Liberty shortly before the election and his own $TRUMP meme coin (an entirely separate crypto venture) in January 2025, days prior to his inauguration. Says the former adviser, \u201cChase was very proud: \u2018Who would have thought? Dirtbag like me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Herro, roughly five-foot-ten with a slender build that he has described as the body of a 12-year-old synchronized swimmer, grew up in a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin. His family was \u201cvery poor,\u201d he said on a podcast in early 2020: \u201cI think when you live in poverty, you assume everybody\u2019s poor.\u201d He sold marijuana and was arrested at least four times before his 18th birthday on charges including theft \u2014 for a scheme in which he was caught on-camera cashing his stepfather\u2019s checks \u2014 and drug possession. Herro\u2019s mother once called the police on him for domestic abuse. Shortly after high school, following a drug-related arrest, Herro cut off his ankle monitor and fled to California, according to a story he\u2019s told to friends and on podcasts.<\/p>\n
When he got to California in the mid-aughts, Herro, who pronounces (and often spells) his name Hero, reinvented his origins. He described his mother as an ultrawealthy cheese-factory magnate and his father as a Mafia member who had been murdered in front of him, according to former roommates. (On podcasts years later, Herro said that his father had died of a heart attack and was found alone in his home and that he\u2019d bought his mom a house, told her to \u201cquit her job, and let her retire.\u201d\u201cMy parents have no money,\u201d he said on a separate podcast.) He worked at an ampm gas station in San Diego and then in construction, but he bragged about having a second home and a fancy-car collection. \u201cNone of that existed,\u201d says a former friend. \u201cHe was like, \u2018You just gotta talk about it like it\u2019s already here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A former roommate says even two decades ago he clocked Herro as a sociopath. \u201cLiterally everything is a lie,\u201d says the former roommate. \u201cThe watches he\u2019s wearing, the sunglasses \u2014 fake. He wouldn\u2019t say he went to McDonald\u2019s; he\u2019d say, \u2018I ate at Ruth\u2019s Chris.\u2019\u201d (That was not the only time someone made this assessment about Herro. \u201cIf someone calls me a sociopath, I kind of, like, look over and I\u2019m like, \u2018Thanks, I think?\u2019\u201d Herro said on a podcast in 2020. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to invest money in a day trader or investor, I want them to be a sociopath.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Herro\u2019s fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy began to bear fruit when he discovered the then-hot world of affiliate marketing. He would create false dating profiles, pretending to be a single woman, and post them on sites like Backpage or Craigslist; when someone expressed interest in meeting in person, Herro would ask them to first sign up for a background check, enrolling them in a $40-a-month service from which he got a commission, according to the former roommate. \u201cI remember going to his house and he\u2019d have, like, 20 laptops out just running these bots that would post these things,\u201d says this person. Herro sold hair-loss remedies, colon cleansers, and tactical flashlights. In 2010, after Herro launched a marijuana dispensary called Healthy Wealthy and Wise, a man who believed he\u2019d invested $170,000 in the venture sued him for fraud, claiming the corporation never existed and Herro had deposited the funds into his personal account. (The plaintiff was awarded a default judgment with interest.) Soon, a website appeared detailing complaints against Herro under the domain name ChaseHeroScam.com. \u201cChase just doesn\u2019t care who he has to step on or who he has to jump over; it was like, \u2018I want to be rich,\u2019\u201d says the former friend. \u201cThat was it. Not even famous; just rich.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herro moved to a different part of San Diego County and gave his old friends a tour of his new home. \u201cHidden inside fake books were just stacks of cash,\u201d says another former friend. Herro also displayed a Desert Eagle pistol \u2014 one of the largest-caliber handguns sold in the U.S. \u2014 on his nightstand. On YouTube, Herro posted videos of a warehouse full of dirt bikes and mini go-carts, paintball guns, and other toys; friends remember photos in which he was unloading a moving truck filled with fine art. He bought a 34-foot boat he named Clickbait.<\/p>\n
In 2019, the entrepreneur Sam Bakhtiar asked Herro on a podcast to opine on fraud. \u201cAt least they\u2019re trying to do something in life. It\u2019s fucked up, but, like, I\u2019ll give credit to a bank robber versus someone who sits on a fucking TV and eats potato chips all day,\u201d he said. \u201cGranted, is their execution wrong? Yeah, probably. But I\u2019m not God; I\u2019m not here to judge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herro met Zak Folkman in an online \u201cmastermind\u201d group, where they shared tips about how to make a lot of money quickly. Folkman was a co-founder of a website called Date Hotter Girls. They quickly became business partners. \u201cHe\u2019s a Chad,\u201d the former World Liberty adviser says of Folkman.<\/p>\n
Herro and Folkman launched several online communities, including one they called the Watchers, promising investment advice and selling subscriptions for thousands of dollars a year to access their network \u2014 a kind of knockoff of Tai Lopez. In 2021 at a meeting in Miami, Herro pitched his supporters on the promise of a decentralized-finance, or DeFi, crypto project. \u201cHe was almost crying as he told us how incredible it was that he put 90 percent of his net worth into DeFi and it was the most amazing financial thing he\u2019d ever discovered,\u201d says a member of the group. \u201cHe seemed like a genuine evangelist and very passionate about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year later, the project was worthless, but Herro showed no signs of having lost nearly all of his assets. By then, he had a fleet of about a dozen luxury vehicles, all of them white, with Montana plates, exploiting a loophole that allowed him to avoid paying taxes on the cars. Taxes overall were now such an issue for Herro that around 2021 he moved to Puerto Rico \u2014 claiming on Facebook he lived at the Ritz there \u2014 for half (plus a day) of each year, taking advantage of the popular tax haven. \u201cIt sucks; we call it just putting in time. It almost feels like going to jail,\u201d he told a friend. \u201cI just do it because it saves me so much money.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Herro met Zach Witkoff at the golf course, it probably wasn\u2019t a coincidence. \u201cI don\u2019t think anything is incidental with Chase,\u201d says the former World Liberty adviser. \u201cIt\u2019s been crazy to watch him. It\u2019s like the same exact thing he\u2019s been doing for years; he\u2019s just in different rooms with different, more powerful people,\u201d says the former roommate. \u201cMy friends and I were just waiting for the day that Chase ends up in handcuffs. But over the years, it\u2019s like, Holy shit \u2014 he\u2019s doing what now? He\u2019s in the White House? I was like, Wow, the scam artist teamed up with the biggest con man.\u201d Says the second former friend, \u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable this guy scammed his way to the top.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herro\u2019s credentials as a crypto entrepreneur began and ended with a project he launched in April 2024, just a few months before World Liberty was formed. Called Dough Finance, it was supposed to be a DeFi blockchain platform from which Herro promised \u201cguaranteed\u201d profits through a process he called \u201clooping,\u201d according to an investor named Jonny Lopez. This involved repeatedly borrowing against crypto holdings and using the borrowed funds to buy more.<\/p>\n
Herro\u2019s business partner was Folkman, who got a degree from New York Law School in 2010, around the time he co-founded Date Hotter Girls under the pseudonym Zack Bauer. (On the site, he sold an e-book \u2014 still available in a package priced at $97 \u2014 that includes \u201ca story about Zack \u2018motorboating\u2019 a girl at a dive bar\u201d and instructions on how to \u201cmove situations toward sex ridiculously fast,\u201d according to a promotional page.)<\/p>\n
That spring and summer, Herro raised money from investors, including Lopez, who put in $1 million. \u201cBro I never do shit,\u201d Herro texted Lopez, according to evidence later filed in court. \u201cAll handshakes and go.\u201d Herro indicated to Lopez that Dough had \u201cover $3 billion\u201d in liquidity: \u201cWhat you think I built some stupid toy lol.\u201d<\/p>\n
But days after Lopez had completed his investment, his money disappeared. Dough had been hacked; the money was gone.<\/p>\n
![\"UAE-ECONOMY-CRYPTO-CONFERENCE\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/e0118bd3818002f718694e23daf7d871f6-witkoff-trump.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Sun in Dubai with Zach Witkoff and Eric Trump in 2025 before the big breakup.
\n Photo: Giuseppe Cacace\/AFP via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Lopez and other investors were incredulous \u2014 and blamed Herro. According to a lawsuit filed by Lopez in 2025 accusing Herro of negligent misrepresentation and fraud, Herro \u201caltered or manipulated Dough Finance\u2019s code\u201d and staged a fake governance vote as part of a plan to steal investors\u2019 money. (Folkman is not named in the lawsuit.) \u201cAs it turns out: each and every promise and representation that Chase made to Jonny was a complete lie \u2014 a ruse by Chase to pump the liquidity on Dough Finance\u2019s platform so that Chase could take it for himself,\u201d Lopez alleged in the suit. When a process server attempted to serve him with the lawsuit, Herro ran. (In July 2026, Herro urged the court to dismiss the case, arguing that Dough really had been hacked.)<\/p>\n
Suspicions around the Dough hack were rampant when Trump partnered with Herro and Folkman on World Liberty two months later. Trump officially announced World Liberty in a livestream in September 2024, and the company released a \u201cGold Paper\u201d (a spin on the white papers that crypto projects typically publish) emblazoned with his portrait over a graphic of a golden paint splotch. In the paper, World Liberty said its mission was \u201cto democratize finance\u201d \u2014 a rip-off of trading app Robinhood\u2019s slogan. What World Liberty seemed to promise was unprecedented in the U.S.: a government-blessed crypto project that would offer an alternative not just to crypto platforms like Coinbase or Circle but to banks themselves. Indeed, World Liberty, \u201cinspired by the vision of Donald J. Trump,\u201d proposed a \u201cnew strategy\u201d that would \u201chelp to safeguard the US Dollar\u2019s future as the global reserve currency,\u201d the Gold Paper read, \u201cwithout compromising on freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Gold Paper was light on specifics about what World Liberty actually planned to do. Those in charge did not seem to know either. Around the time of the launch, Steve Witkoff, who was then listed as a co-founder of World Liberty along with his two sons, asked the venture capitalist Nic Carter to meet him at Pura Vida, the smoothie-and-sandwich chain, in Sunset Harbour in Miami. He wanted Carter to come onboard as an adviser but could not explain concepts fundamental to the business. \u201cHe didn\u2019t know what crypto or DeFi was. He didn\u2019t know what the pitch was,\u201d recalls Carter. \u201cI\u2019m like, Oh, okay, so there\u2019s no product. They\u2019re just doing a token.\u201d The biggest giveaway was when Witkoff explained that Trump had become interested in the crypto project because \u201cBarron was getting active with meme coins\u201d \u2014 but pronounced it \u201cme-me\u201d coins.<\/p>\n
What was important, Witkoff explained, was that they launch World Liberty before Trump was elected president again. \u201cThey needed Trump to be involved for launch as a private citizen,\u201d says Carter. \u201cThey had to rush it out.\u201d Carter, who voted for Trump in the election, declined the adviser position and warned that World Liberty risked damaging the candidate at the polls, given its credibility issues. That\u2019s when Witkoff\u2019s tone changed. \u201cThen he, like, flips to try to bully me,\u201d says Carter. \u201c\u2018You don\u2019t want to be on the big guy\u2019s bad side.\u2019\u201d (World Liberty describes this characterization of the conversation as \u201cinaccurate\u201d and says the company \u201cnever formally offered Mr. Carter any such role.\u201d)<\/p>\n
In those early days, World Liberty was desperate not just for big-name advisers to burnish its reputation but for start-up capital. It had set an initial fundraising goal of $289 million. Despite their affiliation with the likely next president, Herro and Folkman \u2014 World Liberty\u2019s only executive officers and directors on initial securities filings \u2014 struggled to attract investors. By the end of October 2024, World Liberty had slashed its investment target by 90 percent to $30 million. Morten Christensen, a Dutch crypto investor living in Mexico, had been considering investing in World Liberty but decided the tepid interest from others was a bad sign. \u201cFor me, that was a red flag \u2014 Oh, never mind, they\u2019re never going to raise enough,\u201d he says. \u201cIn crypto, if it\u2019s not popular, it\u2019s not going to be popular.\u201d Among investors, there were almost endless reasons to stay away. \u201cNothing about the project gave a semblance of legitimacy unless you\u2019re delusional enough to see a Trump cash grab as legit,\u201d says one longtime crypto investor who chose not to put in money. Elliot Omanson, a three-time Trump voter and crypto investor with a financial advisory firm in Kansas, says he was against World Liberty from the get-go. \u201cWhy would you want to create a vehicle that has all the appearances of corruption when you\u2019re supposedly going in to fight the deep state and drain the swamp?\u201d he says. \u201cI hate crony capitalism more than I hate socialism or communism because it\u2019s a corruption of my belief system.\u201d Even the crypto venture fund Polychain Capital, which had brokered the introduction to Sun, ultimately declined to invest. \u201cThey weren\u2019t raising any money for months. And it becomes a bit embarrassing for the Trump crew if literally the president, or the soon-to-be president at that point, isn\u2019t able to raise any cash,\u201d says the former World Liberty adviser.<\/p>\n
World Liberty\u2019s founders hoped Sun could change that. Sun \u2014 specifically his wealth \u2014 had become an object of Herro\u2019s fascination. On Logan Paul\u2019s podcast in early 2021, Herro was asked if he had \u201cfuck-you money.\u201d He hesitated, recalling seeing Sun bid at an NFT auction. \u201cI just watched that Justin Sun guy spend $69 million on the Beeple piece,\u201d Herro answered. \u201cDo you know what that made me feel like?\u201d (Sun himself, it turned out, was narrowly outbid at the end of the auction.)<\/p>\n
Sun also had a reputation as a hustler. In creating the Tron blockchain, he simply copy-and-pasted code, without credit, from Ethereum, one of the original chains. Tron, launched in 2017, was still a massive hit. A year later, Sun and his company expanded their empire, buying BitTorrent, the site best known as a venue for sharing pirated movies and games, for $140 million in cash. In 2019, he won a lunch with Warren Buffett in a charity auction with a bid of $4.6 million. Soon, Sun was collecting works by Picasso and Warhol, which will eventually be displayed at a museum he is building in Hong Kong (tentative name: Justin Sun Museum). In 2021, he spent $28 million to secure a ticket to space on a Blue Origin rocket. That same year, he became Grenada\u2019s ambassador to the World Trade Organization, after which he started using the title \u201cHis Excellency\u201d on social media and at public appearances. (He continues to go by \u201cH.E. Justin Sun\u201d despite the fact that his diplomatic status was revoked in 2023.) Last year, Tron went public on the nasdaq, though it took a bit of a shortcut, bypassing an IPO by merging with an obscure, but publicly traded, company that makes souvenirs sold at Disney and other theme parks. And while Sun and his companies have had persistent legal controversies (and are notably litigious), he also holds the rare distinction of being one of the few original crypto founders who have never been to prison.<\/p>\n
Staying out of prison was likely on the mind of at least a few investors in World Liberty. Making a large investment in the project was widely seen as a play to curry favor with Trump. The project was upfront about the fact that 75 percent of net revenues would go to the president\u2019s company DT Marks DEFI LLC (of which Trump owns 70 percent and family members own the rest). It was as though World Liberty had opened up a way to give money directly to Trump. Even in the profiteering world of crypto, an arrangement so lopsided, so nakedly self-dealing, was remarkable.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s unbelievable this guy scammed his way to the top.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Just five days before his initial investment of $30 million in World Liberty, Sun bought a banana duct-taped to a wall \u2014 a conceptual artwork by Maurizio Cattelan \u2014 for $6.2 million in a Sotheby\u2019s auction. Sun says he came across the work at random in the Sotheby\u2019s catalogue and was surprised by the attention he received afterward. \u201cI bought that just because I feel this art is kinda cool,\u201d he says. \u201cI bought other art pieces much more expensive than this banana before, but none of those became famous at all.\u201d A few days later, after Sotheby\u2019s advised him to throw the banana away, he ate it. \u201cWhy not? It\u2019s still fresh,\u201d he says. \u201cEating a banana is very common behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sun\u2019s investment was big news in the financial press. CNBC\u2019s headline was \u201cBanana Auction Billionaire Invests in Trump\u2019s Crypto Venture\u201d; Bloomberg went with \u201cTrump\u2019s Crypto Project Was a Bust Till Justin Sun Stepped In.\u201d Sun put in the additional $15 million after the heady round of press. By March 2025, World Liberty had raised $550 million.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ddfa7271db1b352817023ece6814667e45-sun-blue-origin.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Sun in space aboard Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard suborbital vehicle in 2025.
\n Photo: JustinSun Tron\/YouTube\n <\/p>\n
As with many crypto projects, there were two kinds of stakeholders in World Liberty. Insiders had actual equity shares in the holding company. They are owners in the traditional sense, and operating profits flow to them. In January 2025, World Liberty sold a large equity stake in the company for $500 million to a firm associated with the United Arab Emirates\u2019\u201cspy sheikh,\u201d Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, days ahead of Trump\u2019s inauguration. Following the sale, the Trumps retained 38 percent ownership of World Liberty. (Herro and Folkman\u2019s company and an entity owned by the Witkoffs held smaller stakes.)<\/p>\n
Outside investors, including Sun, received $WLFI crypto tokens. Their hope was that World Liberty\u2019s projects and activities would raise the value of those tokens on crypto markets \u2014 that if World Liberty built a thriving crypto platform (with, for instance, innovative and potentially lucrative options for lending and borrowing $WLFI), that would create public demand, which, in turn, would drive up the price. But those links can be tenuous in crypto. $WLFI holders don\u2019t own equity in the company or have a claim on profits \u2014 rather, they own the right to vote on some decisions for the project. ($WLFI is what is known as a governance token.) In practice, though, governance often amounts to no power at all.<\/p>\n
World Liberty told investors that the tokens\u2019\u201csole utility\u201d was voting rights \u2014 not trading. In a statement, the World Liberty spokesperson said, \u201c$WLFI was sold as a governance token without transfer rights initially. And those who purchased $WLFI governance tokens understood there was never any expectation of profit from the holding of $WLFI.\u201d But to Sun and other investors, it seemed like legalese to avoid breaking securities laws. \u201cFirst of all, if it\u2019s a crypto token, it\u2019s going to be traded on chain whether they want it or not,\u201d says Christensen, who decided to buy the World Liberty token in the first round after Sun came onboard. \u201cIt would make no sense for members of the public to pay any money for the tokens,\u201d Sun wrote in his lawsuit, \u201cif the tokens offered no economic upside.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t long before several of the outside advisers to the project \u2014 a larger group of a dozen or so that, in addition to Sun, included a venture capitalist from Polychain, a pseudonymous cybersecurity specialist, and the head of a firm called the Crypto Lawyers \u2014 started to have concerns. The advisers had been in a Telegram group chat, but Folkman abruptly shut it down in late 2024, before they\u2019d been able to offer their expertise to World Liberty. \u201cThey never asked for any of our advice,\u201d says one former adviser.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018World Liberty is trying to threaten me into silence.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Months went by, and the \u201cfinancial revolution\u201d World Liberty promised never materialized. Sun says he gave the World Liberty team ideas for products it could build, but no one followed through on any of them. \u201cI started to notice what I believed to be red flags,\u201d Sun says now. \u201cThey seemed to be interested only in raising money, not in developing actual products.\u201d<\/p>\n
World Liberty did continue to raise money. In doing so, the company\u2019s co-founders often dangled the possibility of a partnership, a deal, or a good word with the \u201cbig guy\u201d to entice investors to put money in. It wasn\u2019t exactly a quid pro quo. \u201cMore they were going out saying, \u2018If you invest $11 million in us, we\u2019ll invest $1 million back in your thing,\u2019\u201d says the former adviser.<\/p>\n
In March 2025, World Liberty announced plans for its first real product: a stablecoin to be known as USD1. This dovetailed with the genius Act, soon to be passed by Congress, which would bring stablecoins into the country\u2019s regulated financial system. Each issued USD1 coin \u2014 a crypto token designed to always be worth exactly $1 \u2014 would be backed by a real dollar held by World Liberty. In other words, minting 100 million USD1 coins required $100 million in funds backing the coins. The real dollars would be invested in U.S. T-bills \u2014 short-term-debt notes from the federal government that currently pay between 3.5 and 4 percent interest. As of July 2026, there were 4.2 billion outstanding USD1 coins, penciling out to roughly $150 million in annual interest income. That money is almost pure profit.<\/p>\n
![\"Justin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/193a6090e3385910d1f2c823f9c91cbd11-sun-washington-dc.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Sun heading to the White House in 2025.
\n Photo: Jason Andrew\/The New York Times\/Redux\n <\/p>\n
The stablecoin business was a huge boon for insiders, creating a permanent dividend for the Trumps, the Witkoffs, Herro, and Folkman (and perhaps the Emiratis, though the terms of their ownership aren\u2019t totally clear). But the stablecoin, as World Liberty elected to build it, was unlikely to meaningfully increase the value of the $WLFI token. Outside investors were left watching in frustration.<\/p>\n
World Liberty\u2019s big bet on a stablecoin business made it clear to savvier $WLFI holders that there was no longer much incentive for the company to develop or launch other products, including ones that might profit regular $WLFI holders. \u201cWhat\u2019s the fucking point? Kick the can down the road. They\u2019re making money,\u201d says the former World Liberty adviser. Perhaps, the adviser tells me, a future Democratic administration would put an end to the scheme and a Democratic Congress would subpoena the players, but he doesn\u2019t think that scenario is weighing heavily on the minds of the $WLFI executives. \u201cThey don\u2019t care,\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter because they\u2019ve had two-to-three years of making fat cash off the stablecoin treasury.\u201d Meanwhile, the company still hadn\u2019t released any $WLFI tokens, which meant the outside investors such as Sun who held them were still completely locked up.<\/p>\n
As 2025 wore on, Sun began to feel increasingly used by World Liberty, which was continually pushing him to put in more money. World Liberty executives \u201cengaged in a sustained and escalating campaign to pressure Mr. Sun into committing hundreds of millions of dollars to mint USD1,\u201d his lawsuit later alleged. They approached him at industry conferences and events, badgering him to commit $200 million to the treasury backing USD1, as well as to take an equity stake in World Liberty\u2019s holding company. Sun said \u201cno.\u201d\u201cThere\u2019s never enough,\u201d says a person familiar with the situation. \u201cHow are you going to spend all the money you raise? This company keeps raising funds without building.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in May 2025, Zach Witkoff went to a celebratory dinner with Herro, Folkman, and other $WLFI associates at Wing Lei, a Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant at the Wynn.<\/p>\n
While Witkoff talked about his dad and his relationship with Trump \u2014 \u201cThe president loves me\u201d \u2014 Herro and Folkman talked business, according to a veteran of the U.S. crypto industry who was in attendance. Herro pitched the group on a plan that he said would make World Liberty, and the dinner guests, \u201cso much money,\u201d says this person, who remembers being unimpressed by the idea. \u201cChase, you just get an awful feeling from this guy right from the beginning that this guy is out there to scheme and pull a fast one,\u201d the person says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t trust him with a penny.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though it was never formally announced by the company, sometime around the summer of 2025, Witkoff was elevated to CEO of World Liberty. Before then, his most notable credentials, aside from jobs at his family\u2019s firms, were speaking at the 2024 Republican National Convention and naming his firstborn son Don James Witkoff after the president. \u201cI can\u2019t think of a reason why he would be the CEO of a multimillion-dollar business,\u201d says the former adviser, who adds that he believes Herro was the de facto leader. \u201cWhen it comes just to raw intelligence, Chase has him beat hands down.\u201d (\u201cZach Witkoff is the CEO, both in name and in reality,\u201d said World Liberty\u2019s spokesperson.)<\/p>\n
Last august, World Liberty announced that the $WLFI token would begin trading on the open market on September 1, 2025 \u2014 the crypto equivalent of an IPO. Investors would finally be able to turn their tokens into real money. A few days before the debut, Sun posted photos of himself with Eric Trump in Hong Kong, both smiling and giving thumbs-up.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/12beaef8b629cbd47b781225f864deec61-sun-trump.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Sun with Eric Trump in 2025, shortly before $WLFI began trading publicly.
\n Photo: Justin Sun\/Instagram\n <\/p>\n
But in an unexpected move, World Liberty released only 20 percent of each investor\u2019s tokens. \u201cGreat, now we can sell some, but what about the rest?\u201d says Christensen, who has become an unofficial spokesman for thousands of disgruntled $WLFI investors. When trading opened, many worried holders rushed to sell what they could. After a quick initial spike, $WLFI\u2019s price went into free fall. By the end of the day, $WLFI was down 40 percent. Sun claims he didn\u2019t sell any of his tokens, but that he moved 56 million of them \u2014 about one percent of the 4 billion he owned overall \u2014 into other crypto wallets after the price fell, \u201cmeaning the transfer could not have been the cause of the decline.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three days later, Sun says he woke up to find he was locked out of his entire World Liberty account. Even the 20 percent share that he should have been able to trade was gone, he alleges in his lawsuit. While his World Liberty tokens had been worth as much as $1 billion on paper, it was no longer clear that they were his. \u201cMy account got frozen completely,\u201d he says. \u201cI think I was in shock for a while. After all the trust and support I gave them, I couldn\u2019t understand what happened.\u201d It looked to Sun \u2014 who\u2019d lost money in many a failed, hacked, or corrupt crypto project, from Mt. Gox to FTX \u2014 like a classic rug pull, cryptospeak for a scheme in which founders run off with their investors\u2019 funds. \u201cI was like, This is losing control, and I lost all confidence in the project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sun says he soon discovered that World Liberty had powers he was unaware of and a level of control that is unusual for decentralized blockchain projects. On August 24, eight days before trading went live, the company had pushed through a change in its \u201csmart contract\u201d \u2014 the algorithm that automatically executes token transactions \u2014 giving World Liberty the power to freeze, and effectively seize, any investor\u2019s tokens without warning. \u201cIn the dark of night, the company thus created a \u2018blacklisting\u2019 function that it could wield at will,\u201d Sun would later say in his lawsuit. Or as he put it in a post on X, \u201cThis is a trap door marketed as an open door.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sun concluded that not only did World Liberty have no intention of returning his coins, it also planned to scapegoat him for its disastrous debut and, worse yet, try to get him in legal trouble with the Trump administration. World Liberty said in a post on X that a certain unnamed user \u2014 which many, including Sun, assumed was him \u2014 was \u201csuspected of misappropriation of other holders\u2019 funds.\u201d (A representative for Sun says, \u201cJustin would never have had the practical ability to misappropriate anyone\u2019s funds, since he was just an investor and adviser, and was never in a position to access user funds.\u201d) A few weeks later, around September 24, according to Sun\u2019s lawsuit, Herro gave Sun a choice: He could publicly agree for World Liberty to \u201cburn\u201d (that is, destroy) his $WLFI, relinquishing his right to what was then $776 million in tokens, or World Liberty\u2019s leadership team would call a vote among all token holders on whether to forcibly burn Sun\u2019s holdings. Either way, Sun would never get his tokens back. Herro allegedly amped the pressure up further, threatening to report Sun to U.S. criminal authorities, claiming there were problems with the compliance documents he submitted when he first invested, according to Sun\u2019s lawsuit, where he describes this as \u201cextortion.\u201d\u201cAs the claim alleges, there were repeated occasions where World Liberty, through Chase Herro, threatened to burn my tokens,\u201d Sun says. \u201cIt was definitely not a pleasant experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even then, Sun held out hope he could patch things up without going to court. After all, he still thought highly of President Trump, who had loomed large in his life since childhood, when he\u2019d learned English in part by watching episodes of The Apprentice in China.<\/p>\n
But by early February 2026, many advisers to the company \u2014 minus those who had taken official positions at World Liberty \u2014 had distanced themselves from it. \u201cI\u2019m not aware of anybody who talks to them anymore,\u201d says the former adviser, \u201cafter various dealings or misdealings that have occurred.\u201d In getting involved, he had believed his expertise would help protect investors\u2019 money. But he and other advisers were concluding that continuing to support World Liberty was a reputational liability. \u201cI know for a fact a lot of other people had similar questions in their head: How much do I really want to be associated here and for how long?\u201d<\/p>\n
World Liberty had also wiped its team members off the \u201cAbout\u201d page of its website, erasing the stack of a dozen (mostly smiling) headshots \u2014 including the four Trump men, three Witkoffs, Herro, Folkman, and three other executives. Sun took the move as a tacit admission of guilt. \u201cI think they know they are doing something wrong,\u201d says Sun. \u201cI think they want to hide behind names \u2014 either Trump\u2019s name or my name.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trumps, though, continued hawking their cryptocurrency as though nothing were amiss. Barron Trump, who, alongside his half-brothers, had initially been listed as one of World Liberty\u2019s top team members (his official title: Web3 ambassador) but who had been silent on the project for months, piped up on X in late January to announce that World Liberty\u2019s stablecoin had surpassed $4 billion in market value. \u201cThis is just the start,\u201d he added. A few weeks later, in February, the two elder sons hosted a confab at Mar-a-Lago billed as the first World Liberty Forum, attended by a roster of A-list names including Nicki Minaj, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, and fifa president Gianni Infantino. The pool was decorated with a giant version of World Liberty\u2019s golden-eagle logo. Also on display were the many ways the Trumps were making money off their crypto enterprise: The family presented plans to finance the Trump Organization\u2019s new hotel in the Maldives, featuring yachtlike floating villas, using World Liberty\u2019s stablecoin. It was a \u201cmagical day,\u201d Eric Trump told the New York Post.<\/p>\n
Sun did not attend the conference but was in the process of finalizing his own deal with the Trump administration that would improve his fortunes in other ways. On March 5, the SEC announced a settlement of the case against Sun \u2014 the one involving Lindsay Lohan and other celebrity crypto promoters \u2014 begun almost three years earlier. The deal was very favorable for Sun. One of his companies, a lesser-known subsidiary called Rainberry, which operates BitTorrent, had to pay a fine of $10 million. It was, in Sun\u2019s terms, less than two bananas. As part of the settlement, neither Sun nor any of his companies admitted or denied any wrongdoing; all the claims against Tron, and Sun personally, were dropped. Sun\u2019s team has emphatically rejected the notion that his World Liberty investment greased the gears in Washington for the dismissal of his case, suggesting the timing was coincidental. But no one could argue that the investment had hurt Sun\u2019s legal prospects.<\/p>\n
For the Trumps, World Liberty continued to pay off on a historic scale. In April, CoinDesk reported that World Liberty had taken 5 billion $WLFI tokens from its treasury and used them as collateral to borrow $75 million in stablecoins. The company then sent those stablecoins to a Coinbase account, through which it could easily sell them on the open market. The maneuver appeared to give the World Liberty team an additional way to cash out \u2014 this time on tokens that were still technically frozen \u2014 not available to average $WLFI holders.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Trump\u2019s financial disclosure shows nine World Liberty transactions that look different from the others. These entries are labeled as sales of cryptocurrency-wallet \u201ckeys,\u201d which the former World Liberty adviser says likely means the Trumps sold wallets containing frozen $WLFI tokens. The practice is not uncommon in the industry (the buyer acquires the tokens at a discount and intends to flip them for a profit in the future, after they are unlocked), but it was also not a viable option for most $WLFI holders, whose locked tokens weren\u2019t even always visible in their own wallets (and who would probably have had to take a much steeper markdown than Trump). Together, these transactions represent nearly $291 million in income for the president.<\/p>\n
Last summer, World Liberty made a deal with a company, Alt5 Sigma, that has funneled another $500 million to the Trumps. World Liberty took a controlling stake in the company, while Alt5 Sigma bought $1.5 billion worth of $WLFI tokens. But as the token price has crashed, Alt5 Sigma has lost more than 90 percent of its stock-market value, changed its name, and entered talks to sell its underlying business for as little as $15 million.<\/p>\n
As $WLFI investors watched the token price continue to sink \u2014 down 80 percent at this point \u2014 they waited for news. \u201cIn my mind, the remaining tokens that are locked are worth zero,\u201d says Christensen.<\/p>\n
On April 15, World Liberty announced a proposal: The other 80 percent of investors\u2019 $WLFI holdings would be unlocked and made available to them on an extended two-phase schedule, the first batch in 2028 and the second batch over the subsequent two years \u2014 meaning some coins would still be locked up after Trump is out of office. If the value of $WLFI was contingent upon Trump wielding presidential powers, as many believed it was, the timeline suggested a sizable share of the tokens could be worthless by the time investors got them back. Because World Liberty tokens carry governance rights, the proposal would be subject to a vote. But investors who voted against the proposal would \u201cremain locked indefinitely,\u201d the company announced. \u201cThe vote was kind of like a hostage situation,\u201d says Christensen. \u201cIt was a Godfather-type scenario, gun to the head. \u2018Here\u2019s an offer you can\u2019t refuse.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when Sun says he made up his mind to file the suit against World Liberty accusing the company of fraud and breach of contract. He did so on April 21. The lawsuit was \u201ca last resort to protect my rights and, I believe, the rights of other token holders,\u201d says Sun. Not that he could have voted anyway; by seizing his tokens, World Liberty had revoked his voting rights. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just that my money would go to zero, but I felt like people were using my reputation basically to harm other investors without even having their name exposed to the public,\u201d says Sun. \u201cIn my opinion, if World Liberty can do this to me \u2014 a billionaire who can afford to fight back \u2014 they can do it to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the world of crypto, Sun\u2019s fight against World Liberty was a kind of joke \u2014 an occasion for Schadenfreude for all those who had warned their peers to stay away. \u201cAnyone I know that got involved with the project just did it because they knew Trump was enough of a crook to not let this fail,\u201d says the longtime crypto investor who did not invest. \u201cThat anybody could be surprised by what has happened is the only shocking part.\u201d<\/p>\n
World Liberty itself tried to brush off Sun\u2019s claims. \u201cThe only thing more ridiculous than this lawsuit is spending $6 million on a banana duct-taped to a wall,\u201d Eric Trump posted on X the day after Sun filed his complaint. \u201cWe are incredibly proud of the @worldlibertyfi team.\u201d Zach Witkoff expressed optimism that the case would quickly be thrown out, calling it \u201ca desperate attempt to deflect attention from Sun\u2019s own misconduct.\u201d (The commenters did not exactly agree. \u201cYou don\u2019t blacklist wallets cause you feel like it motherfuckers,\u201d reads one of the most popular replies.) The same day Witkoff made his post, the body-cam footage of his Miami arrest four years earlier suddenly appeared online. (Those charges were dropped.)<\/p>\n
It was true that Sun has a reputation in the crypto world for being a little shady, as some of his milder critics put it. And many in that industry dismiss the claims as a pot-versus-kettle situation. \u201cIt\u2019s scammers scamming scammers,\u201d more than one crypto investor told me. The former World Liberty adviser said the scenario reminded him of the meme in which two Spider-Mans point at each other.<\/p>\n
But the lawsuit is not just about the money, Sun insists. In the scheme of his ten-to-11-figure wealth, the $45 million Sun put into World Liberty is equivalent to what your average millionaire might spend on a modest vacation. And Sun is no stranger to the risks involved with venture capital or angel investing. The decision to sue, he says, was about the principle and his reputation more than anything else. \u201cOnce I think I know that something goes wrong, I need to tell people what happened before more people get impacted,\u201d says Sun. \u201cI think it\u2019s more about my moral obligation. I felt I need to just call it out.\u201d For him, calling it out meant posting on X just before he sued: \u201cI denounce the ongoing token scandals by the bad actors at $WLFI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Privately, other major World Liberty holders took Sun\u2019s side, though they were afraid to say so publicly. To them, the promise of World Liberty had been a bait and switch. What had initially appeared as an America-approved decentralized cryptocurrency with strong profit potential was in fact what Wall Street calls a roach motel \u2014 an investment where money goes in but never comes out. \u201cJustin is more credible,\u201d says the former World Liberty adviser. After all, this person had experienced many of the same issues with his tokens as Sun. \u201cThe team and advisers are locked up completely,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is a unilateral modification that was not contemplated or agreed upon.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his lawsuit, Sun does not name Trump or his sons \u2014 other than to say he remains an \u201cardent supporter of President Trump and the Trump family\u201d \u2014 but the decision to sue is still politically dangerous for him. The Trump administration wields power over whether to prosecute or pardon him. Sun seems willing to make that gamble. \u201cI know a lot of people close to Justin have told him, \u2018Don\u2019t do this,\u2019\u201d says a person in Washington who has advised Tron. Trump would take World Liberty\u2019s side in the fight, they warned. But Sun wasn\u2019t moved. \u201cThis is not a political issue,\u201d Sun told this person. \u201cThese guys are like young punk criminals. This kind of stuff is what gives the industry a bad name. You gotta stand up for what\u2019s right, no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n
One early crypto executive, who received his own pardon from Trump, advised me to take anything Sun says \u201cwith an enormous grain of salt.\u201d But, he added, \u201che\u2019s putting his whole shtick at enormous risk by breaking with Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
On May 4, a couple of weeks after Sun filed his suit, World Liberty sued him for defamation. Represented by the law firm Clare Locke, which successfully sued Fox News over its \u201cbig lie\u201d coverage following the 2020 election, World Liberty tells a different version of events. Though sections of its accusations are redacted, World Liberty claims in the suit that it froze Sun\u2019s coins to \u201cprotect\u201d itself and its investors from prohibited conduct by Sun. Just before the $WLFI tokens started trading, the company alleges, Sun placed a large bet against them, transferring $300 million \u201cto fund an aggressive short position.\u201d It also claims Sun made \u201cstraw purchases\u201d on behalf of other investors. Notably, though, World Liberty did not sue Sun for breach of contract or fraud. \u201cI believe that World Liberty is trying to threaten me into silence, but that will not work,\u201d says Sun. \u201cI stand by the decision to speak out about conduct that I believe was improper and harmful to token holders.\u201d He\u2019s determined to take the case to trial: \u201cI believe the evidence will prove our allegations to be true.\u201d<\/p>\n
No matter the outcome of the dueling legal actions \u2014 both are still in preliminary stages (in June, World Liberty filed a motion to dismiss Sun\u2019s case) \u2014 the Trumps have raked in a quantity of crypto winnings that will sustain them, and their potential future political endeavors, for generations to come. Reading through the 927-page financial-disclosure report released by the Office of Government Ethics on June 30 can feel overwhelming \u2014 all those eight- and nine-figure transactions, all those crypto assets, all those highly creative monetization practices.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the U.S. Senate is focused on trying to pass a law that would create a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. The so-called clarity Act has consumed a huge amount of Congress\u2019s time and energy over the past year and is being pushed by the same industry donors that filled up Trump\u2019s campaign coffers in 2024. The act would give crypto strong legal protection going forward \u2014 a dream scenario for a sector that was on the ropes before Trump\u2019s second term. As of late July, the main sticking point to getting enough votes in the Senate is language that would bar all government officials \u2014 including the president \u2014 from selling cryptocurrencies. Observers are not optimistic that Trump will agree to the kinds of restrictions that would be required to get the necessary Democratic votes. The crypto industry might yet come to realize the downside of being in business with Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
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