Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, everyone. It's Jess.
And Ryan. A quick heads up before we begin. Our next live show is just days away.
It's happening Tuesday, April 28th. The Journal podcast is going to be in Los Angeles at the El Rey Theater.
We'll have Oscar and Emmy winner Riz Ahmed.
And TV and film producer Franklin Leonard, who created The Blacklist.
We'll be talking about the future of Hollywood, plus a few other fun surprises.
And there's still a few tickets left, so grab yours now.
Find the link in our show notes. See you there April 28th. Can't wait to meet you.
Join me live on Twitter Spaces at 8 p.m. this September 16th for the launch of World Liberty Financial.
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Chapter 2: What is World Liberty Financial and how did it start?
government.
It's something that is totally unprecedented in American politics and, you know, is something that I think previous presidents would absolutely have avoided because it calls into question the motivations behind your administration's foreign policy.
World Liberty said President Trump and Steve Witkoff haven't been involved in the company since taking office and that Witkoff has divested. The White House said that President Trump's assets are in a trust managed by his children and that World Liberty is run by the Trump and Witkoff sons, independently of their fathers.
The White House also said that there are no conflicts of interest and that President Trump, quote, only acts in the best interest of the American public. Rebecca, how much money is the Trump family made from World Liberty Financial?
Yeah, it's a pretty amazing number. So World Liberty has doled out at least $1.2 billion to the Trump family. And just to put it in perspective with Trump's, you know, real estate empire, it took eight years for Trump's real estate, golf, and brand empire to make that amount of money between 2010 and 2017.
So it's safe to say that Trump is seeing an influx of wealth unlike what he's ever seen before.
Over the course of two episodes, we're diving into the secret dealings that put World Liberty Financial on the map while personally enriching the Trump family. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Friday, April 24th. This is Episode 1, A New Crypto Fortune.
In December of 2024, just a few months after World Liberty Financial's launch at Mar-a-Lago, a huge week-long party was starting on the other side of the world, in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
It's known as Abu Dhabi Finance Week. The week normally kicks off with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
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Chapter 3: Who are the key figures behind World Liberty Financial?
The Grand Prix is a pregame to the main event, one of the most important crypto meetups, the annual Bitcoin Middle East and North Africa conference.
This is where crypto heavyweights and policymakers in that space fly in for a couple of days. You know, obviously there's the appeal of trying to score meetings with these deep-pocketed Emirati investors.
Two of the founders of the Trump family's crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, were also there.
You had Eric Trump, Steve Witkoff, who by that time had been appointed President Trump's special envoy for the Middle East. It was this incredible intersection of the biggest names in crypto and the incoming presidents in a circle.
Going into the Abu Dhabi conference, World Liberty Financial was still brand new. How was World Liberty received by the crypto industry, at least at first?
It was not considered a very serious project. I don't think people really thought that it would be a serious competitor in the industry.
But this conference was an opportunity for World Liberty Financial to challenge that perception. Eric Trump and Steve Woodcoff were spending time in the conference's VIP room, or what's called the whale-only backroom, which was open to attendees who'd paid $10,000 to get in.
the whales, this kind of crypto term for like guys that have a lot of crypto wealth. If you scored a whale ticket, then you had access to the whale only room, which was a kind of sectioned off part of the conference where all the big dogs would go and hang out.
In that whale room, Steve Witkoff and Eric Trump mingled with crypto titans, people like crypto billionaire Justin Sun and representatives of Emirati investors with access to billions of dollars. Also at this conference was a whale who had kind of been washed up on the beach, Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, the founder of the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance.
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Chapter 4: What role did foreign investments play in World Liberty Financial's growth?
They needed to hold onto it as backing for their stablecoin USD1. But they could invest that money into US treasury bills. And interest on $2 billion is not nothing. What did that mean for World Liberty?
They suddenly had a product which was going to be generating about $80 million in income each year.
About a month after that huge USD1 transaction took place, Binance formally applied for a pardon for CZ. And by the time that CZ got his pardon in October of 2025, World Liberty was thriving.
I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.
That was Trump at a press conference the same day the pardon became public. He was asked about it again on 60 Minutes. Why did you pardon him?
Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.
World Liberty said it played no role in CZ's pardon and that its business interactions with Binance have been routine and that there are no conflicts of interest. The company also said that neither Binance nor CZ played a role in, quote, The company also said that Binance's help was, quote,
Binance has said neither the company nor CZ have financed or helped WorldLiberty and disputed that the company created a task force. Binance also said that the company's involvement with USD1 was limited to services that are similarly available to others. A lawyer for CZ said that there was no link between the pardon and any business decisions and that it came after a formal review process.
So to sum it up, one year into Trump's presidency, World Liberty Financial had grown into a major crypto company. CZ got his pardon, and Binance was on its way to a comeback. But there's another player here that we haven't told you about. The buyer, who had made that huge $2 billion transaction using World Liberty's stablecoin.
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