DUBAI, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Eric Trump was in Dubai on family business. Meeting with a Chinese businessman and his associates on the sidelines of a cryptocurrency conference in May this year, the son of U.S. President Donald J. Trump ran through his usual talking points about the inefficiency of traditional banks and his own famous father’s run-ins with financiers.
Then came the pitch. Buy at least $20 million of “governance tokens” in the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, and become part of a venture that Eric Trump predicted would soon embody the future of finance in America, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
To some in that small gathering, the technology Eric Trump’s team described for World Liberty seemed “rudimentary,” the person said. At the time, World Liberty was a fledgling business. It hadn’t yet created the cryptocurrency-based finance platform it promised after its September 2024 launch. It still hasn’t.
Even so, the pitch apparently worked. On June 26, an obscure entity called Aqua1 Foundation, which said it was based in the United Arab Emirates, announced it was buying $100 million of cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty. It was the single largest known purchase of the so-called WLFI tokens at the time.
