Eric Lipton
speaker
759 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 5 Aug
Eric Lipton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Tether is the largest stablecoin issuer in the world, and it's trying to become a bigger player in the United States marketplace. So, I mean, all of the things we've been talking about are going to be playing out inside this clubhouse behind closed doors. And, you know, and then Donald Trump Jr. is essentially going to be making money off of it.
They are kind of serial entrepreneurs, you might call them. They have been trying to pursue a bunch of different business interests over quite a number of years. And they've had a number of unsuccessful efforts. They tried to start two different crypto companies that... One of them was subject to an inappropriate release of some of its funds. Another one went out of business.
They also were selling everything from a colon cleanser to a way to meet hot girls, a website to give advice for how to meet, quote, hot girls. And so they were not your usual business partners that you would expect to see the Trump family aligned themselves with.
And they got introduced to the Trump family through Steve Witkoff, who is President Trump's Mideast advisor, who's helping attempt to negotiate peace in the Middle East. And Steve Witkoff is also trying to work in Russia relative to the war in Ukraine. His son, Alex Witkoff, is one of the investors in World Liberty.
And they brought in Zach Folkman and Chase Hero, who are these two individuals who'd had a series of business efforts that have interesting providence.
As we were investigating the startup of World Liberty, we heard from several crypto companies that Zach Folkman, using the nickname of Z Money, was sending signal messages out to cryptocurrency executives around the world saying that if they would give World Liberty perhaps $15 million worth of an investment,
that World Liberty would use its clout and the Trump family name to buy their token and bring them international attention. And the executives we spoke with were, in several cases, felt that that was a deceptive transaction that was making it appear as if the Trump family and World Liberty had independently decided that it should invest in their token.
And they declined that offer because they felt that it was just the kind of thing that the cryptocurrency industry should be attempting to avoid in which it's not an arms late transaction. And so that's what we learned that Zach Folkman was doing as World Liberty was trying to raise money.
And we do know that there were multiple partnerships formed with cryptocurrency companies, but we spoke with three of them that were offered these kinds of terms and that turned it down.
It did. In fact, once these partnerships were being announced, there were short-term spikes in the price of almost all of the companies they invested in. So they had the ability to drive market decisions by making that investment, and they knew that.
So what they were saying is, okay, if you give us $15 million, we'll buy like $12 million of your token, and we'll keep $3 million as part of the deal.
Yeah. Behind the scenes, there was money that was being exchanged and there was no public transparency about the financial relationship between the parties.
Yeah, that's right.
Yes. Yet another in the crazy roadmap of things that we've been trying to examine is that there are two crypto companies that the Trump family has started recently. The second one is selling a meme coin, which is something like a collectible. It's like a Beanie Baby or a baseball card and you buy it and it has a certain value.
And so the day before Trump was inaugurated, he announced that he was issuing a new meme coin, dollar sign Trump. And overnight, it became one of the most valuable meme coins in the world. And of course, in this case, yet again, the Trump family owns most of the stockpile of the meme coins that are being issued there. And it also is going to make transaction fees off of it.
So every time that meme coin is bought and sold, it gets a small chunk of money. And now in order to continue to drive up the price of that meme coin, President Trump announced recently they're going to have effectively an auction where whoever owns the most of these meme coin tokens will have the privilege of having dinner with President Trump at his golf club in Virginia later this month in May.
And the people who – among the 220 that – the people at the top of that list will actually also get to make a visit to the White House.
So, I mean, again, it's like this is how – I can't even like imagine that the president of the United States and his family are doing an auction that is now playing out as we sit here to be able to buy more of their crypto token and to bring money to the Trump family in exchange for – getting access to the president. So it's for his personal benefit. It's not a campaign contribution.
It's to personally enrich the family of the president. That's happening right now. In addition to all the other things that we've spoken about, that's playing out with the meme coin.
Yeah. Well, that's I mean, you know, if anything, you know, Donald Trump is an incredible marketer and brand builder and and he's marketing and brand building. And he's been doing that for decades now. And that's what he's doing here again.
Showing 661–680 of 759 · page 34 of 38
← Previous
Next →