The Trump family’s crypto business World Liberty Financial is using a publicly-listed company, ALT5 Sigma Corporation, to raise $1.5 billion for the purchase of its WLFI token. In a press release on Monday, ALT5 Sigma announced that it would sell a combination of 200 million new and existing shares and use the proceeds to buy the Trump family token.
The move represents an effort by the Trump family to capitalize on a recent trend of using either small publicly traded or blank-check companies to let a broader swathe of traders gain exposure to cryptocurrencies.
The strategy was first popularized by Michael Saylor, who renamed his decades-old software company MicroStrategy to Strategy as he transformed it into a Bitcoin behemoth. He and company executives began adding billions of dollars in Bitcoin to the balance sheet for the firm, which prompted traders to see the company’s stock as a proxy for the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Strategy’s market capitalization soon soared along with Bitcoin’s rise.
Now, a flood of other copycats have entered the market. In addition to Bitcoin, there are treasury companies for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Sui, Ethena, and now WLFI. All pitch their companies’ stock as a proxy for the cryptocurrencies they hold and a way for traditional investors to gain exposure to crypto.
“One small step for mankind, one giant leap for WLFI,” said the X account for World Liberty Financial, announcing the raise.
Zach Witkoff, the CEO of World Liberty and son of President Donald Trump’s Steve Witkoff, will become chairman of the board of directors at ALT5 Sigma. Eric Trump, son of the president and cofounder of World Liberty, will also join the board, and Zak Folkman, the crypto company’s COO, will become a board observer.
World Liberty was the lead investor in the raise. Other investors weren’t disclosed. A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial declined to comment.
World Liberty Financial’s move into the public markets is the Trump family’s latest expansion of its crypto empire. President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have their own memecoins. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have not only backed World Liberty but also spun up their own Bitcoin mining firm.
And Trump Media and Technology, the publicly traded company that encompasses Trump’s social media site Truth Social, has also recently pivoted to crypto and added $2 billion in Bitcoin to its balance sheet.
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