YouTube Deep Summary

Do you know this logo? Probably not, but it's a company that's about to make Trump and his family billions. Trump doubled his fortune within a year thanks to crypto. The Trump family is positioning themselves as major players in the industry, leveraging the presidency like no one before them. So, investigative reporters took a closer look at their crypto ventures, and they uncovered a story of get-richqu advisers and dating gurus turned business partners, a foreign investment, White House access for sale, posted fraud lawsuits, and presidential pardons. The world's most powerful man is reshaping an industry his businesses are deeply invested in. And somehow outside that industry, hardly anyone seems to notice. How did the Trump family pull this off? That's why I am rich though I got no money. No, I am rich. Isn't it funny though? This video is partially based on an investigative report by Eric Lipton, David Yaffy Balani and Ben Protest for the New York Times. You'll find the link in the description. In 2019, Trump tweeted, quote, "I'm not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity. In 2021, he said, >> "Bitcoin, I I just seems like a scam." >> But by July 2024, he said this during a Bitcoin conference in Nashville. >> This afternoon, I'm laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world. A stark turnaround. What happened? When Biden enters office in 2020, his administration increases regulation of the crypto industry in several ways. The goal is to better protect investors from the risks and volatility of the crypto market. Most importantly, the Biden administration empowers the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate crypto companies. The SEC goes into action under the newly appointed chairman Gary Gensler. It starts charging crypto companies to create legal precedent. For example, the agency goes after the creators of the Terara cryptocurrency. Terra wiped out $40 billion in market value when it collapsed in 2022. It charges the responsible company and its founder with orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud. The SEC argues that cryptocurrencies are simply securities, a financial asset like stocks. That definition comes with a whole set of compliance requirements which crypto companies often don't meet. So, the agency goes after them for listing unregistered securities, for misleading marketing, and for failing to register tokens as securities. Within 3 and 1/2 years, the agency issues roughly $6 billion in total penalties across about 100 cases. The crypto industry doesn't like it. In their view, it doesn't make sense to treat all crypto as securities. According to them, they don't fit the definition. They want less regulation. And so do many crypto enthusiasts who feel that the Biden administration is hostile towards crypto. Enter the presidential race of 2024. A sizable chunk of voters is worried about this issue. Over 50 million Americans own crypto and over 2 million join a crypto advocacy group. Politically, it makes sense for Trump to change course to appeal to these voters and corporations frustrated with his opponent. >> I pledge to the Bitcoin community that the day I take the oath of office, Joe Biden and Camala Harris's anti-crypto crusade will be over. it will end on day one. I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman. He first dipped his toes into crypto in 2022 with an NFT collection. He claims seeing how many people paid in crypto for these NFTs changed his mind on the issue. Also, he begins to receive sizable donations from crypto companies for his presidential campaign. This election is the first time the crypto industry went allin on lobbying efforts, but another thing is happening behind the scenes. Donald Junior and Eric are the key players in the Trump family's business operations. According to the New York Times, they supposedly convinced their dad that embracing crypto would not just be a smart political move, they could also make quite a bit of money with it. They came up with two ideas, a coin and a bank. Both will be incredibly successful. It's not just money. Our lives are increasingly digital. But until recently, mobile internet was annoyingly physical. We travel a lot for our reporting and a hefty roaming charge will scare flight mode right into you. But recently, we completely switched to Sy's ESIM service. No more hustle to find a SIM on site. No more ripoffs and insane roaming charges. SY gets us instant Eim data in 200 destinations. That's fast, borderless connectivity straight from our phones. Just download the app, pick one of their many, many plans, and install with a few clicks. Their pricing is more than fair, and you can easily top up. It's legitimately a gamecher. And that's not all. SY comes with a bunch of useful extras. A virtual location feature for more privacy and an ad blocker that saves up to 28.6% data. And right now you can get an exclusive 15% discount on sale data plans. Simply download the app and use code Fern TV at checkout. We can wholeheartedly recommend it. Meme coins are like digital collectibles. There's a limited supply for each coin and if one takes off, its value can skyrocket. On January 17, Trump unveils his own memecoin. It comes with a disclaimer that it's not an investment opportunity and has nothing to do with any political office. The launch goes extremely well. Millions of people buy it. Within days, it becomes one of the most popular and valuable meme coins in the world. Two Trump businesses control 80% of all coins, a share worth 58 billion at one point. That would be about 90% of Trump's net worth. Shortly after, the value plummeted and so far never recovered. In consequence, nearly half of the people who bought this coin lost money. A tiny group of people made enormous profits. The Trump family hasn't actually sold their coins, which are still theoretically worth billions, but they made an incredible amount of money nonetheless through the sale of the tokens and transaction fees. The Financial Times estimates a figure of at least $335 million. Under the Biden administration, Trump's and other meme coins might have been investigated by the SEC. They're a hot bet for wild financial speculation and scams, and most buyers tend to lose money, but that doesn't happen in this case. And once Trump is in power, he replaces the head of the SEC as promised. >> On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman. Shortly after, the agency publishes a statement saying that memecoins are essentially not to be investigated or regulated by them because they can't be defined as securities. The agency also ends their investigation into several crypto companies. Experts are quick to point out a conflict of interest. The president and his family profit from crypto while he's also the one setting crypto policy. Crypto executives fear Trump's coin could damage the industry's reputation. one they've been working to rebuild after years of scandals. But it doesn't end here. In April 2025, it's announced that the top 220 holders of Trump's coin will be invited to a private dinner with the president. The top 25 will also get access to an exclusive pre-dinner reception and a special VIP tour of the White House. Mostly foreign crypto investors spent a total of $148 million on Trump coins for a chance to attend. Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun alone seems to have paid $16 million. More on him in a minute. The attendee list was not published, but other notable figures included the crypto investor Srock O kind Warwick and the memecoin startup meme core. This might give the impression that one can buy access to the president of the United States. Luckily, the White House clarified. >> The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable. The American public believe it's absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency. >> But all of this is just a tip of the iceberg. This story has been in the news extensively. Meanwhile, the full extent of the Trump family's involvement in crypto is concealed within a far more ambitious and far less public venture. According to Eric Trump, it's one of the most successful things they ever did. On September 16, 2024, Trump announced the launch of a new venture called World Liberty Financial. This new business is run by his sons, Eric, Donald Jr., and Baron. The goal is to become a kind of crypto bank, a place where people can borrow and lend money in digital currencies. Their plans are laid out in this gold paper that has Trump all over it. He's listed as the company's chief crypto advocate. DT Marks Defi LLC is a corporate entity of the Trump family. Trump's assets are managed by his children, but he still directly benefits from them. This entity owns roughly 40% of World Liberty Financial. The other four founders include Zack Witkoff and his father Steve Witco, a real estate mogul, longtime friend of Trump and his special envoy to the Middle East. The Atlantic dubbed him the Rio Secretary of State. Then there are Zachary Faulkman, known as Zoney and Chase Harrow. The two were reportedly brought in through Zack Whitov, and they had rather interesting careers before teaming up with the president's family to launch a crypto bank. Z Money once ran a site called date hotter girls. >> Like what it is that you want to do to this girl? Throwing her up against the wall and ripping her clothes off. According to the New York Times, the two also sold colon cleanses and gave getrich quick advice. First 14 days of January, I made a million dollars net. I became a man. >> In any case, this team gets right to work. First, World Liberty Financial begins to sell a new cryptocurrency called Wilfi. The Trump family is entitled to 75% of the revenue from these coin sales after a minimum has been generated that will stay in the company. Whoever buys gets voting rights in the company in the future. The purchase essentially makes you a shareholder. The Trump family owns $22.5 billion of these coins. The goal is to sell $300 million worth of this new currency, but at the end of October, sales are at just a few million. Then election night changes everything. >> Thank you very much. Wow. Incredible movement. This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before. I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman. >> Big things on the horizon for World Liberty Financial. Suddenly, people are starting to buy. Many investors are from places like Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates. They are legally not allowed to donate to a presidential campaign, but Willfi offers a nice workaround to Beck Trump. Other investors previously had trouble with the SEC. Here, one man stands out, Justin Sun. At the time, the SEC is suing him and his companies for fraud and securities violations. They alleged the unregistered trading of securities, extensive wash trading to make it seem that particular coins had trading activity to inflate their price, and the undisclosed promotion of two coins through multiple celebrities. Sun spends a total of $75 million on World Liberty's coins after the election. According to him, that has nothing to do with the giant lawsuit and is simply a vote of confidence in Trump. Then Trump is inaugurated and Gensler steps down as chairman of the SEC. Shortly after, the agency requests to pause the lawsuit against Sun. In 2024 alone, Trump made $57 million from Willi token sales. Word Liberty Financial is just getting started, though. Next step, a transformative initiative. They supposedly set out to help out smaller crypto companies by investing into their coins. But the New York Times found out that these deals apparently have a not so public layer. Apparently, World Liberty Financial doesn't simply buy other coins. They may propose asymmetrical currency swaps. This is how it would go. A company buys somewhere between 10 and $30 million of Willi and in turn, World Liberty Financial buys a smaller chunk of their coin. This way, word liberty would reportedly make up to a 20% premium on these deals. The company's argument for these types of deals is supposedly that they're like super close to the president. Some crypto companies apparently felt word Liberty was essentially selling an endorsement, but reportedly several crypto companies struck deals with World Liberty Financial. Many others rejected them, calling the supposed approach dishonest. World Liberty Financial told the New York Times that it would be false, absurd, and dangerous to suggest that investments or partnerships with World Liberty Financial were conducted as some sort of political quid proquo. But the New York Times found even more troubling coincidences. World Liberty Financial announced a partnership with Athena Labs in December 2024 and bought $5 million of their cryptocurrency. One of Athena's investors pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act in 2022. Trump pardoned him in March of 2025. Trump also called for legislation to govern stable coins so they could better operate in the US. Those are cryptocurrencies designed to always be worth $1. Shortly after World Liberty Financial introduced their own stable coin, USD1. It already has a market cap of over $2 billion, making it the fifth biggest stable coin in the world. The coin was used for a $2 billion investment into Binance by MGX. Binance is the world's largest crypto exchange. Chungpang Zhao is the founder and former CEO of the company. Last year, he was sentenced to 4 months in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering in the US. In light of this deal, Zho met with Zack Witkov, Zoney, and Chase Harrow. MGX, on the other hand, is a state-owned investment company in Abu Dhabi. The deal was led by the National Security Adviser of the United Arab Emirates. Again, some worry this could present a conflict of interest. One could argue that through this deal, a foreign country is directly contributing to the financial benefit of the US president. And this deal is just one part of the Trump family's growing business relations in the Middle East. There's more, though. The Trump Media and Technology Group is the company behind Trump's Truth Social platform. In May, it raised more than $2 billion to buy Bitcoin. This makes the company effectively a giant bet on the cryptocurrency. Just 2 months prior, Trump had announced a national crypto reserve. Specifically, Bitcoin and Ether would be at the heart of it. In turn, these two coins and many others gained in value significantly for a period. World Liberty Financial had also been buying $240 million worth of Ether in the months before the announcement. Yet another Trump venture recently raised $220 million for Bitcoin mining. So what does all of this mean? There are many moving pieces to the story. Reports of possibly secretly sold stakes and apparent divestment by Steve Vitcov. New maneuvers to align Willi and the Trump memecoin. But this is the big picture. According to Forbes, crypto now makes up most of Trump's wealth, around 60%. Just think about that for a second. He inherited and expanded a real estate empire for half a century. Now, it took just a year for him to double his wealth. Is it a coincidence that this is also the year he became president again? The year in which he seized control of the most important regulatory bodies around crypto. The New York Times writes that World Liberty Financial has erased centuries old presidential norms, eviscerating the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in a manner without precedent in modern American history. The picture Trump's crypto ventures are painting is that of an oligarchy where rich people in trouble with the law suddenly don't have trouble anymore. Where foreign governments and investors enrich the US leader directly and where you get to go to the White House if you just give the Trump family enough money. We asked World Liberty Financial for a comment. They did not get back to