• Jump in income represents a massive pivot for family business
• Analysts say crypto initiatives constitute a conflict of interest

DUBAI: Eric Trump was in Dubai on family business. Meeting with a Chinese businessman and his associates on the sidelines of a cryptocurrency conference in May this year, the son of US President Donald J. Trump ran through his usual talking points about the inefficiency of traditional banks and his own famous fathers run-ins with financiers.

Then came the pitch. Buy at least $20 million of governance tokens in the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, and become part of a venture that Eric Trump predicted would soon embody the future of finance in America.

To some in that small gathering, the technology Eric Trump’s team described for World Liberty seemed rudimentary. At the time, World Liberty was a fledgling business. It hadn’t yet created the cryptocurrency-based finance platform it promised after its September 2024 launch. It still hasn’t.

Even so, the pitch apparently worked. On June 26, an obscure entity called Aqua1 Foundation, which said it was based in the United Arab Emirates, announced it was buying $100 million of cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty. It was the single largest known purchase of the so-called WLFI tokens at the time.

The Chinese businessman who met with Eric Trump in Dubai was Guren Bobby Zhou, who has executive roles in multiple businesses and who is under investigation in Britain for money laundering, according to that nation’s National Crime Agency and a document filed in an immigration case at London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

The Dubai meeting was just one stop on a globetrotting investment roadshow the two elder sons of President Trump Eric and Donald Trump Jr. embarked on around the time of their fathers election to a second term.

In Europe, the Middle East and Asia, they have been promoting World Liberty and other ventures that funnel investors cash to Trump family businesses, known collectively as the Trump Organisation.

The Trump brothers’ efforts have been a whopping success. In the first half of this year, the Trump Organisation’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier, according to calculations based on the presidents official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other sources.

Of the first-half total, $802 million more than 90pc came from Trump crypto ventures, including sales of World Liberty tokens.

That $864 million payday represents actual income cash flowing, free and clear, into Trump family coffers. Calculations were reviewed by half a dozen crypto and real estate experts and a certified accountant who has studied the US Internal Revenue Services approach to crypto.

Trump family wealth

The Trumps’ first-half crypto income dwarfed what the family earned from its traditional businesses $33 million from the presidents golf clubs and resorts and $23 million for licensing his name to overseas real estate developers, according to the Reuters estimates.

More than half the Trumps’ income $463 million came from sales of World Liberty tokens alone, including up to $75 million from Aqua1s token purchase. On its website, World Liberty says a Trump Organisation entity receives 75pc of the revenue from the token sales through its association with World Liberty. The family also made $336 million from sales of a Trump meme coin, $TRUMP, this news agency calculated, using assumptions vetted by five analysts.

Due to a lack of transparency in the Trump meme coin business, estimates of income from the coins carry a higher degree of uncertainty than those for WLFI token sales. The Trumps are minting a trove of hard cash from digital assets backed, so far, by little more than the Trump name. World Liberty tokens, like most crypto products, are registered on digital ledgers called blockchains.

But WLFI tokens offer holders little beyond a limited say in the businesss plans, unlike governance tokens for similar projects. And meme coins like the $TRUMP coin are essentially collectibles whose value reflects the popularity of the internet joke, meme or personality associated with them.

In a letter, Timothy Parlatore, a lawyer for the company, said: WLFI tokens are not securities; they are digital assets with real utility, including governance rights that benefit holders as the platform grows. He also said: The Alleged Valuation and Income Analysis of WLFI Is Inaccurate and Misleading.

The jump in the Trump’s income represents a massive pivot for the family business, said Carter Davis, an assistant professor of finance at The Ohio State University who has studied cryptocurrency pricing and who reviewed the Reuters calculations. Even if you go through and you do the most conservative estimate it’s pretty wild that you end up with such a huge fraction of the income coming from crypto.

Legal but unethical

The identities of most buyers of the WLFI tokens are hidden behind opaque wallet addresses the unique identifiers investors use as keys to access and manage their holdings. Among the few major buyers whose identities are known a mix of foreign and US investors most have histories of legal and regulatory entanglements related to their business endeavors. And as the Trump brothers travels over the past year show, foreign investors have been a major target for token sales.

The alignment of the Trump family’s crypto initiatives with President Trump’s public role as overseer of US crypto policy constitutes a conflict of interest unprecedented in modern presidential history, government ethics experts said.

These people are not pouring money into coffers of the Trump family business because of the brothers’ acumen, said Washington University law professor Kathleen Clark, who specialises in government ethics and was commenting on Reuters findings. They are doing it because they want freedom from legal constraints and impunity that only the president can deliver.

Blurring the line

World Liberty advertises its plans on its website an app for making crypto deposits, for example, and a crypto-backed borrowing facility. But for now, as a pure business play in a crowded field, it has little to recommend it.

The venture has yet to unveil what it heralded last year as its core business: a peer-to-peer financing platform capable of challenging traditional banks. Since March, its leadership has actively promoted a stablecoin a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to traditional assets like dollars or gold called USD1.

While the stablecoin’s name belongs to World Liberty, the coin is issued and supported by another company that pays World Liberty a share of the coins profits. The coin’s circulation is dwarfed by that of market leaders.

Further, while WLFI holders can vote on limited governance matters, the platform is not designed to let them award themselves a share of profits. That’s unusual among peer-to-peer crypto lending platforms.

—Detailed version can be accessed on Dawn.com

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2025