World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency startup founded last year by the Trump family, announced Monday that a publicly traded technology firm would begin buying large quantifies of its signature digital coin.
The firm, a little-known tech company called ALT5 Sigma, is planning to sell $1.5 billion worth of shares, using the proceeds to buy $WLFI, a cryptocurrency created by World Liberty, the announcement said.
Similar initiatives have become wildly popular in the crypto world this year, after the success of Strategy, a public tech company formerly known as MicroStrategy that has built a bitcoin stockpile worth billions of dollars. Strategy’s stock price has soared in sync with the price of bitcoin, which has set a series of record highs in recent months.
As part of the deal, World Liberty will receive shares in ALT5, according to securities filings, in return for $750 million worth of $WLFI coins. Eric Trump, the president’s middle son, will join ALT5’s board, and Zach Witkoff, a World Liberty founder and the son of President Donald Trump’s Middle East adviser, will serve as chair of the board.
The deal marks the latest expansion of the Trumps’ sprawling crypto empire, which has buoyed the family’s finances and created sweeping conflicts of interest. Not long after starting World Liberty, Donald Trump began selling a so-called memecoin, known as $TRUMP, generating hundreds of millions of dollars for his family. His sons Eric and Donald Jr. are also involved in a separate bitcoin mining venture, American Bitcoin.
At the same time that his family has invested in crypto, the president has implemented policies designed to boost the industry. He ended a long-running regulatory crackdown on crypto companies, created a federal stockpile of bitcoin and signed legislation that was heavily backed by the industry.
Trump started World Liberty in September, unveiling the venture in a livestream from Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida. Soon after, the company began selling $WLFI, generating $550 million from investors around the world, with a large chunk reserved for the Trump family. World Liberty also started offering a second type of digital currency known as a stablecoin because it is designed to maintain a constant price of $1.
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