If Trump Is Selling Out The Presidency — Should You Be Buying?

Three days before his inauguration, Donald Trump launched a memecoin that rose more than 10,000%. He did so the same night that power players in the crypto industry were invited to a black tie event in Washington D.C. that was hosted by the same organizers who invited him last year to Bitcoin’s largest conference.

But for as much noise as his memecoin made, it appears to be a smokescreen for a much more worrying Trump project that could enable him to sell his influence as President – and indeed is still currently raising money from both foreign and domestic investors by issuing yet another token.

As it happens, crypto can be a pretty convenient tool for President Trump to create tokens he could use to both capture the value of his brand and influence (as he’s done with his memecoins) and the value of his power as the President influencing the new regulatory rules as they’re being written (as he’s currently doing with the launch of the new Trump-aligned DeFi platform World Liberty Financial.)

Here’s why it appears President Trump (and his family) are working to sell out the Presidency by leveraging crypto. And please keep in mind that this isn’t meant to be framed as an attack on what President Trump appears to be doing. (In fact, both President Trump and Eric Trump shared my thread on X that lays out the basis for this op-ed.)

First, let’s start with an indisputable fact: It is illegal in the United States to sell an office of power. Many have learned this the hard way. In 2011, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was convicted on corruption charges after he tried to sell the Senate seat left vacant after Barack Obama became President. (Ironically, he was pardoned by President Trump after spending nearly eight years of his 14-year sentence in prison.)

Leveraging Obama’s Senate seat to win favors from people was clearly illegal. But what if it were possible to sell an office without a direct quid pro-quo? What if, instead, you just launched a token and gave people the expectation that if they were to buy it, it could come with political, or regulatory favors? As Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently wrote, that might not be a good path to go down.

President Trump, Eric, Don Jr., and even Barron Trump are currently involved in the build-out of one of the largest projects in crypto. The decentralized finance platform World Liberty Financial has already raised close to half a billion dollars via a token sale and outside investors — including foreign nationals.

While the project prominently features Trump, they've been more careful since he’s been sworn in as President. The World Liberty fundraising site notes it’s “the only DeFi platform inspired by Donald J. Trump.” After once closing the token sale, the sale has re-opened at a higher price and now displays that there are just about one billion tokens left. 

As World Liberty launches, it's creating a bidding war among the blockchains in crypto. Not only is Trump the President of the United States, he also just showed the crypto world that he has the potential to add $15 billion to a token’s market cap with not much more than a couple posts on social media.

And that's where the plan to leverage Trump's influence as President becomes a rather large ethical question for Americans. Because foreign investors and foreign crypto founders are investing massively into this platform, including China-born Tron founder Justin Sun, who’s also an adviser.

After Tron Founder Justin Sun directed an investment of $75 million into World Liberty, the latter turned around and bought $7.5 million of Tron’s token $TRX. To be clear, I’m not saying there was a quid pro-quo there, but that’s kind of my point.

The Constitution is extremely clear on Presidents not being able to profit from the office. Specifically, this is laid out in the so-called emoluments (Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8) that generally prohibits federal officeholders from receiving any gift, payment, or other thing of value from a foreign state or from foreign actors:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

But thanks to the Supreme Court ruling that recently gave President Trump large flexibility over which of his actions are explicitly “Presidential” and which are executed in a personal capacity, he's essentially shielded from any claims of selling favors via World Liberty Financial. The fact that his memecoin also launched before he took office also likely helps from a legal defense perspective against any criticisms.

But just because Trump won't ever be tried for selling his influence as President, does that make it ethical? And should you be buying?

World Liberty Financial’s token sale is a bit unorthodox for DeFi. Not only are the WLFI tokens sale only being sold to Americans who are accredited investors, (those who qualify, or make more than $200,000 annually during the prior two-year period) they are also being marketed as non-transferable.

After closing the raise at a lower price of $0.015, the sale re-opened at $0.05 per token, which would roughly value the project at a $5 billion fully diluted valuation. The project’s disclosures also make it clear that the token does not entitle holders to any revenues derived from the platform, raising questions about what upside the token might actually offer beyond governance. (In fact, the overwhelming majority of revenues are to be directed to various entities, including those controlled by President Trump.)

“DT Marks DeFi, LLC and its affiliates, including Donald J. Trump have received a fixed grant of 22,500,000,000 $WLFI tokens and are entitled to 75% of net protocol revenues,” the fine print reads.

So, is any of this ethical? The answer to that question would probably be a lot clearer if it featured payment in dollars and the quid pro-quo were just with one person or entity. But, as of today, World Liberty Financial has raised capital from more than 34,000 individual wallets, with 95% of that coming after the day of the election.

Regardless of how World Liberty Financial shapes up, it’s likely to earn a lot of money even if it only manages to replicate a fraction of the trading activity on other DeFi platforms.

As a President who is now attached to two memecoins and a platform that very likely could list those memecoins in the future, President Trump and his family stand to not only benefit from owning the casino, but also the money that people are using in it.

As the World Liberty Financial sale closes in on selling the last of its tokens — and the project reportedly looks to swap some of its tokens with other crypto projects looking for a leg up — a lot of people are probably asking themselves if they should buy the token, and if they do, how much they stand to gain by getting in on owning a part of the President's influence.

Maybe the real question we should be asking is at what cost?

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