Donald Trump’s crypto venture launched its stablecoin Wednesday on an exchange recently banned from the United States after admitting to violating anti-money laundering laws and agreeing to pay a $300 million fine. Forbes staff writer Zach Everson joins Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss.
Read the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/05/21/trump-crypto-coin-kucoin-300-money-laundering-world-liberty-financal/
Read the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/05/21/trump-crypto-coin-kucoin-300-money-laundering-world-liberty-financal/
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brady Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is my
00:07Forbes colleague, staff writer Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for joining me.
00:12Thanks for having me back. Always excited to talk about Donald Trump's new crypto adventures.
00:17And I'm excited for the conversation as well, because as you noted, President Donald Trump
00:23is now in the crypto space. He was apparently the inspiration for World Liberty Financial,
00:28a DeFi crypto company associated with the Trump family. And you have some reporting on their
00:33new partner, KuCoin. So tell us about them. So one of the things, the first real project that
00:40this decentralized finance outlet that they have, World Liberty Financial, is a stable coin called
00:47USD1. And so you put a stable coin out there, it's kind of pegged to the dollar, it allows people to
00:53move money, possibly faster than they could in a traditional banking system. So to be able to
01:00access this stable coin, it has to be traded on various platforms, much as like to buy or trade
01:05stocks, you'd need to get it on an exchange. In this case, to access the stable coin, you need to
01:10get it on an exchange. Now, what's interesting here is that this one exchange that just started
01:14to list it called KuCoin. It's an exchange that's banned in the United States after it was fined $300
01:20million for some charges related to money laundering. So that is President Trump's new business partner.
01:28And so where is KuCoin now then if it's banned in the U.S.?
01:32So it is, it was founded by a couple of Chinese entrepreneurs. It is now based in the Seychelles.
01:39You know, it's on the cloud, it's digital. You can access it from the U.S. if you were to use a VPN.
01:45But it's not something that Americans are legally supposed to be using, at least for two more years.
01:50They agreed to a two-year ban from the market. So, you know, we'll see when that two years is up,
01:55if they're allowed back in, because that would be smack dab in the middle of the Trump presidency.
02:00And so talk to us about what the Trump family has been saying about this partnership,
02:04about this deal, if anything at all.
02:06Yeah, you know, they've been plugging all of their, all the exchanges that they're on.
02:11They're really happy that they're getting listed. They're saying that it's showing a nice buy-in for the product.
02:16The White House reached, when I reached out to comment, just said President Trump is compliant with all conflict of interest rules.
02:22They categorized reporting on his businesses, such as what we've discussed numerous times,
02:27as, quote, years of lies and false accusations.
02:31But, you know, this is, this, the source for this is, is a combination of, you know,
02:37World Liberty Financial's post saying, hey, well, they're on KuCoin.
02:40And then looking at justice.gov, the Justice Department's webpage,
02:44that shows you what KuCoin pleaded guilty to and agreed to pay.
02:49So it's, it's, it's really pretty clear cut that, you know,
02:52what, what we're reporting here about their business partner is completely accurate.
02:57Aside from World Liberty Financial saying, hey, we're on KuCoin.
03:01Are there any other details you know about this deal?
03:05Not much.
03:06So after we published this originally, KuCoin responded to an earlier inquiry.
03:10And they said they weren't able to share the terms of the deal because they had just signed a non-disclosure agreement.
03:16They did say, though, that they were the ones who would initiate conversations with World Liberty Financial,
03:22that they thought it was a stable coin that was growing and would be something that they wanted to offer.
03:27So what we do know is that President Trump himself was the inspiration behind World Liberty Financial.
03:35But just how involved are the Trumps and the president himself in the crypto company?
03:39You know, how involved he is, we don't exactly know.
03:44He's listed as the, you know, the inspiration or as I prefer to think of it as the, the muse.
03:49And he's also called their chief crypto advocate.
03:52Don Jr. and Eric, though, are here to be very involved in this company, especially Eric.
03:56He's spoken about it from the stage at different crypto events.
04:00So it does seem that they are pretty active in that there.
04:03They also hold about 60 percent of the company's tokens and are getting a cut when there are transactions made through the through the stable coin.
04:12So they they are certainly financially benefiting from this company.
04:16It's really interesting to hear President Trump being labeled as a chief crypto advocate,
04:21because that certainly was not the case just a few years ago.
04:23He was a crypto skeptic back in term one.
04:26This is what he wrote in July of 2019, 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.
04:36He also went on to say that there's only one real currency, and that is the United States dollar.
04:41So why do you think that we're seeing this real 180 here?
04:46He's realized there's a lot of money to be made out there based on assets that are full of thin air.
04:51You know, he's his net worth.
04:53He shot up as a result of his crypto dealings, along with Trump media.
05:00So, you know, there's there's Donald Trump is somebody whose opinion can certainly be changed when there's the ability to make a little money, you know, as wealthy as he already is.
05:08You know, we're talking about a guy who famously cashed a check from Spy magazine for 13 cents.
05:13And, you know, as is also, you know, from Trump stakes to Trump University to all the presidential merchandise for sale on his website right now.
05:20Donald Trump likes to make money and it doesn't matter whether it's billions or whether it's a couple of bucks.
05:26So, you know, he learns that, you know, he can go ahead and in between the meme coin he has and this world liberty financial make a few billion dollars based on this.
05:35It's it's no surprise that he's he's certainly been interested in changed his position.
05:40And he's certainly more bullish on crypto term two versus term one.
05:44But is there any evidence that his crypto policy is influenced on his business dealings or his ability to make money on it?
05:52Well, I mean, they seem to go hand in hand, you know, along with him all of a sudden getting into crypto personally is when his administration has changed different policies on it, which isn't too surprising whatsoever.
06:01You know, back in the in his first term, he didn't have much at all in crypto holdings.
06:06I think at one point we found that he had like one hundred thousand dollars of Bitcoin somewhere on his back in like twenty twenty one or twenty twenty on one of his financial disclosures.
06:15So he wasn't involved in it at all.
06:17And now, you know, the fact that that he's making policy that's favorable to his own business interest is certainly not surprising.
06:24I'm curious, then, what are experts in the crypto space saying to you about President Trump's involvement in all of this?
06:32So I spoke with Molly White, who is a crypto researcher, no skeptic on crypto, and she said it wasn't terribly surprised.
06:39You know, mentioned that it was also listed on a couple of other crypto exchanges, which were also not allowed to serve U.S. customers for regulatory reasons.
06:48So, you know, it's the fact that crypto exchanges have legal problems isn't all that surprising.
06:55So, you know, any time you see a currency being listed on one, there is a decent chance that that that crypto exchange has had some problems in the past.
07:05And you and I talk about this every time we talk about President Trump's business dealings profiting from his politics here.
07:12But I am curious, what are the ethical and legal concerns here remind us about can the president profit business wise from businesses outside of his office while serving as president?
07:25It certainly looks that way.
07:26You know, as the White House has pointed out to me on a few occasions that there are no conflicts of interest law.
07:31He's not violated any sort of conflicts of interest law.
07:33And also pointing out that, you know, this stuff had been reported on while calling it fake news.
07:38They also, you know, that the American public decided they didn't care about this.
07:42And didn't think it was real.
07:44You know, he did get reelected despite a wealth of reporting on his business interest the first time.
07:48And then the courts never made a definitive ruling in his first term about whether or not any of his business deals violated the Emoluments Clause, which bans the president from receiving gifts from foreign entities.
08:02Now, if you remember, he had that hotel here in D.C.
08:04He had been sued about that, saying that when a foreign company or foreign government rented rooms or bought a drink or whatever there, spent money, it counted as a emolument and was violating the Constitution.
08:15They argued it didn't.
08:16And, you know, they went up all to the way to the Supreme Court, not on the merits of the case, but just on who even had the standing to sue.
08:23They didn't resolve that.
08:24Trump lost.
08:25The Supreme Court tossed it.
08:26So we don't even know who has the standing to file a lawsuit against Donald Trump for violating the Emoluments Clause.
08:34And to the best of my knowledge, no one has filed such a suit this term.
08:37So legally, you know, it looks like, sure, go go right ahead, help yourself.
08:44And I know you and I have talked before and even in this conversation about just how surprising President Trump's 180 and his decision and his view on cryptocurrency is.
08:53I mean, what exactly do you think in the larger picture does this indicate to you about where he is termed to?
09:00Yeah, you know, my thought is that the biggest lesson that Donald Trump learned from his first term is that he left money on the table.
09:09You know, they were they were reticent in some ways about how they how they profited off the White House.
09:15For example, just just TrumpStore.com didn't wasn't online when he first became president.
09:20Then they came in a couple of years later, but it was only golf merchandise.
09:23You know, at one point they put they started selling soap that had the White House wrapped around it.
09:27I reported on that.
09:28It got a ton of other media attention and they ended up taking that wrapper off the bar of soap.
09:33You know, they would sell a soap set that had three parts of soap in the middle.
09:36One didn't have the wrapper because they took the White House.
09:39I mean, they walked that back.
09:40Famously, you'll remember that he had they were going to have the G7 at Doral.
09:44And there was such an outrage over that that they walked that back.
09:48They don't seem to care this time.
09:49You know, you're seeing the presidential seal pop up the golf markers at multiple discourses.
09:54They Election Day put out a blast selling TrumpStore.com didn't selling his merchandise.
10:00They've got the White House on the gold note that I reported about recently.
10:06You know, Donald Donald Trump is is in office and he's there to make some money this time.
10:10You know, nothing stopped him the first time.
10:11So why not go back and really try to make a lot more this time?
10:16And you certainly taking steps towards that end, especially with crypto.
10:20Well, Zach, I certainly always appreciate our conversations.
10:22And I know as President Trump and what we see coming out of crypto continues in this term,
10:28you and I will have many more conversations on it.
10:31Thanks again for joining me.
10:33Thanks for having me.
10:34Yeah, I don't see the same thing anytime soon.
10:41Thanks for having me.