World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture backed by Donald Trump and the US president’s family, is sounding out investors for a $1.5bn fundraising round meant to set up a public company that will hold its WLFI tokens, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
The structure of the deal is yet to be finalized, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter, adding that large investors in the crypto and tech space had been approached for the venture.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. World Liberty did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
World Liberty – a “decentralized platform” which counts Trump and his sons Eric and Donald Jr as co-founders, according to its website – has earned the family $500m since its launch, according to Reuters’ calculations.
World Liberty tokens, known as $WLFI, are not classified as securities by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and are hence not subject to the same level of scrutiny as investments such as stocks.
Economists who follow crypto and some key Senate Democrats have voiced multiple concerns about Trump’s glaring conflicts of interest in the crypto sector and the broader economic threats that his administration’s ongoing deregulatory efforts pose.
“Trump and his family are clearly eager to establish a broad foothold in the sector prior to further regulatory actions that are likely to boost crypto asset valuations,” Cornell economist and crypto watcher Eswar Prasad told the Guardian in an article published in April. “Such investments by the Trump family take potential conflicts of interest to an altogether new level.”
The Guardian contributed reporting