Trump family calls banking 'politicized' as they launch crypto firm

Former President Donald Trump headlined an event Monday evening about a crypto platform the Republican nominee for president and his sons are promoting. The family made numerous comments about the state of banking today, including access to credit, digital payments, and the potential for decentralized finance to disrupt the financial sector.

"This is the start of a financial revolution," said Donald Trump Jr. of the project, World Liberty Financial, emphasizing the potential of decentralized finance to create new opportunities for individuals and businesses. The X Spaces talk about World Liberty Financial lasted for just over two hours.

Father and son real estate investors Steve and Zach Witkoff echoed Trump Jr.'s sentiment, claiming that World Liberty Financial will be pivotal to transforming traditional lending.

"We can be more egalitarian about it," Steve said about lending, "and at the same time, we can probably do very well in it because there is a large group of people who can't gain credit in the system. Isn't that unfortunate? That young people with great ideas, they can't prosecute those ideas."

Trump Jr. also shared an episode that occurred last year in which PNC Bank briefly ended its business relationship with news aggregator MxM News, which Trump Jr. co-founded. Trump Jr. blamed politicization of the banking system, claiming the Democratic Party wants control over "everyone's balance sheets."

PNC later reopened the account, blaming a "good faith error" and rejecting claims that the temporary closure was politically motivated.

Overall, the talk included few specific details about World Liberty Financial or when it might go live. Project leaders did say they would issue a digital token, WLFI, that would play a role in business governance. Potential token holders would have to be verified, accredited U.S. investors to purchase the cryptocurrency.

World Liberty Financial will be part of the decentralized finance segment of digital assets and is supposed to help with financial security and being able to transact freely, Trump Jr. said during the livestream on Monday.

"It's a real problem that needed to be addressed, and honestly I think this is the way," Trump Jr. said after comments from his father, which included a lengthy discussion of the second apparent assassination attempt on the former president and presidential nominee. He also spoke about his experience launching non-fungible tokens — a kind of digital trading card — and the role his children have played in encouraging his crypto ambitions.

Trump has pledged during his presidential campaign to turn the U.S. into the "crypto capital of the planet," as he put it in an August video about World Liberty Financial. In combination with the imminent launch of his own crypto venture, the comments raise concerns that, if elected, he might use the federal government to help support a business tied to himself and his family.

"If we don't do it, China is going to do it," Trump said Monday, in response to a question about his vision for the U.S. to become the key crypto hub. "China is doing it anyway. But if we don't do it, we're not going to be the biggest, and we have to be the biggest and the best."

Eric Trump also spoke, as did Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, co-founders of blockchain finance app Dough Finance, all to provide more details on the vision behind World Liberty Financial, which largely focused on creating an alternative, democratized finance system for people who feel disenfranchised by banks.

Dough Finance suffered unauthorized transactions amounting to roughly $2.1 million this summer.