U.S. President Donald Trump has a long list of crypto ventures, profiting to the tune of some $1 billion as of October 2025. Of them, a DeFi project dubbed World Liberty Financial might be the biggest.

The platform, which President Trump co-founded, according to its website, along with his three sons, wants to make finance “reliable, open, and made for how the world works today.”

World Liberty Financial was announced by President Trump’s son Eric in August 2024. It is led by DeFi builders Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, along with other members of the Trump family and Zach Witkoff—son of longtime Trump ally Steve Witkoff.

Details on how the project works are still somewhat scant. Let’s take a look at what we know so far.

An Ethereum-based DeFi project

Built using the Aave protocol, World Liberty Financial’s platform hasn’t been released as of October 2025, but the project says it plans to “keep the dollar digital” and provide “loans for institutions and everyday users.”

DeFi—short for decentralized finance—is the sphere of the crypto industry that wants to replace traditional banking. DeFi projects, financial platforms that operate without third-party intermediaries, are usually apps built using Ethereum, the blockchain behind the second biggest cryptocurrency, ETH.

World Liberty Financial also runs on Ethereum.

It’s worth noting that while there are plenty of DeFi apps, the space is still a highly experimental part of the crypto industry and has been plagued by hacks and scams.

Those in the DeFi space typically say they want to streamline a slow and expensive legacy banking system, and World Liberty Financial so far has sold itself as the quintessential DeFi project: A borrowing and lending platform that will “unlock financial access for all, by replacing the limits of traditional banking with open, on-chain infrastructure, creating a fairer system—where opportunity isn’t defined by location, status, or permission.”

What can you do with World Liberty Financial?

While you can’t yet take loans out using the platform, you can buy its native token, WLFI, which has a market cap of $3.56 billion as of October 2025, making it the 43rd biggest cryptocurrency in existence, per CoinGecko data. WLFI is available on top exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, and OKX.

The project also has its own stablecoin, USD1, running on Ethereum and BNB Chain, which Decrypt first revealed in October 2024. The stablecoin is also available on major American exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken.

Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to the value of fiat currencies—in USD1’s case, the U.S. dollar. The assets are a key part of the DeFi economy (and the wider crypto economy) because traders use them to swiftly enter and exit digital asset transactions. Instead of using dollars on traditional banking rails, digital tokens accelerate the crypto trading process.

The Trump family’s involvement

President Trump is listed as “co-founder emeritus” on the World Liberty Financial website, meaning he is no longer involved in the project since taking office in January. His close friend and the White House’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is also listed as a “co-founder emeritus.”

Still, the Trump and Witkoff families have likely made a lot of money from the project: Steve Witkoff’s son, Zach, and the president’s three sons, Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron are all still actively involved in World Liberty Financial.

WLFI’s market cap is more than two and half times bigger than the meme coin President Trump launched ahead of his inauguration, Official Trump (TRUMP). The Trump family owns a significant portion of the WLFI supply; their net worth grew by over $6 billion when the tokens started trading in September.

Conflict of interest concerns

The Trump family’s involvement in WLFI has proved contentious. Democratic lawmakers have frequently criticized the project—and the president’s other crypto ventures. In May 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren took aim at a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund MGX into leading crypto exchange Binance, which used the USD1 token, calling it “shady.”

Prominent House Democrats have also asked the Treasury to provide access to all suspicious activity reports, or SARs, on Trump’s digital asset projects—including World Liberty Financial.

Trump has repeatedly brushed aside concerns over his family’s involvement with crypto ventures including World Liberty Financial, claiming he “hasn’t looked” at the profits.

CNA Staff, Oct 18, 2025 /
14:15 pm

Officials in New Jersey have charged a former parish financial director with the theft of more than half a million dollars in church funds.

Joseph Manzi has been charged with second-degree theft by unlawful taking after he allegedly stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from St. Leo the Great Parish in Lincroft.

Manzi was the subject of an August lawsuit by the parish in which he was alleged to have “systematically, secretly, and dishonestly utilized parish funds for his own personal benefit.” The civil suit claimed he had stolen upwards of $1.5 million.

In an Oct. 17 press release, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s office said Manzi had been officially criminally charged with the theft. Platkin in the release said Manzi used the funds “not to feed his family or for some kind of emergency, but to live a more lavish lifestyle.”

Manzi stopped working at the Lincroft parish in June of this year, the office said. Afterwards, church staff reviewed credit card statements and found “numerous unauthorized charges that were determined to allegedly be for Manzi’s personal benefit.”

The state alleged that Manzi used stolen funds for “event vendors, vehicle repairs, financing, and purchases, including a Cadillac SUV,” as well as purchases such as luxury clothing, sports event tickets and “chartered fishing trips.”

Manzi is facing up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $150,000.

It was not immediately clear why the prosecutor’s office charged Manzi with about $1 million less in theft than the August civil suit alleged. The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Oct. 18 seeking clarification on the figures.

On its website, the St. Leo parish said the controversy “will not prevent Saint Leo the Great Parish from working every day to live our mission – to serve Parishioners and the community in God’s name with the greatest of love and compassion.”

“We ask you all to stand together in our shared faith and to pray for a swift and just conclusion to this troubling chapter,” the parish said.

The New Hampshire Attorney General’s office has cited top state officials — including House Majority Leader Jason Osborne and Karen Liot Hill, the Executive Council’s lone Democrat — with violating state campaign finance laws. The Department of Justice simultaneously announced separate campaign finance sanctions against the House’s deputy majority leader and the political committee run by House Republican leaders.

The flurry of cease-and-desist orders and fines amount to something relatively rare in New Hampshire politics: the enforcement of state campaign finance laws against State House candidates, committees and office holders.

Each case, announced in a press release from the Department of Justice Friday afternoon, also involves individuals who are lighting rods in Concord’s increasingly polarized political environment.

Osborne, who has led Republicans in the House since 2020, was fined $2,000 for failing to file required finance reports for his campaign committee, “Friends of Jason Osborne” during the past two election cycles.

State prosecutors say in investigating a complaint they determined that Osborne, who lives in Auburn, failed to file seven required campaign reports for the 2024 election cycle. In a January 24, 2025 letter, the Attorney General’s office asked Osborne to file the missing reports within 30 days. He didn’t, but on May 9 he provided prosecutors with a spreadsheet showing his committee’s “recipes and expenditures between 2022 and 2024.”

Prosecutors say that information confirmed that Osborne should have filed reports for both election cycles. Osborne eventually did so for both elections. But state prosecutors said the time lag was unacceptable and merited sanction.

“[Y]ou filed your reports for the 2022 cycle more than 33 months after they were due, and you filed your report for the 2024 election cycle more than ten months after they were due,” Assistant Attorney General Brendan O’Donnell wrote Osborne, in a cease and desist order.

The order requires Osborne to comply with state campaign finance laws going forward, and to pay a $2,000 fine within 30 days.

Osborne is also cited in the state’s enforcement action against the Committee to Elect House Republicans, the political committee controlled by GOP caucus leaders for which Osborne serves as chairman.

In that cease and desist order, the Attorney General’s Office wrote that a complaint prompted it to seek more information about the committee from Osborne and House Speaker Sherman Packard on January 24, 2025. Subsequent correspondence names House Speaker Pro Tempore Jim Kofalt, who later replaced Packard as the committee’s treasurer.

At issue are what the New Hampshire Department of Justice called “several substantial discrepancies” in the committee’s 2024 campaign finance reports.

According to the committee’s filing from November 2, 2022, it held a surplus of $154,025. By its June 8 2023 filing, the committee’s surplus was reported as $67,601, but the missing $86,418 difference was never accounted for in 2024 filings.

According to prosecutors, the committee’s filings also failed to reconcile a $15,491 surplus from a 2023 special election. There were also other issues, including missing finance filings, late filings and filings with “significant revisions.”

Prosecutors noted the committee “voluntarily and diligently worked to correct the issues with its filings, including hiring an accountant.”

However the committee’s “initial failure to timely and accurately report its receipts during the 2020 and 2024 electron cycles is not acceptable,” O’Donnell wrote.

Granite Solutions, the political advocacy group operated by Rep. Joe Sweeney of Salem, the House’s deputy majority leader, was also cited for a violation Friday. The cited conduct in this case, for which Granite Solutions was fined $500, included Sweeney’s failure to file a receipts and expenditure report on September 18, 2024, and file an independent expense report within 48 hours after sending out a campaign mailer unauthorized by any candidate.

The mailer in question, titled “Tim Cahill’s Stolen Valor — A Disgrace to our Veterans,” was, according to the state’s cease and desist order, “allegedly sent out on or around September 7 2024.” And while the mailer disclosed it was “not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee,” Granite Solutions failed to file the required independent expenditures report. In the state’s order, O’Donnell wrote that after the state contacted Sweeney in February, he did submit a receipts and expenditures report the following month, and an independent expenditures report in April. But O’Donnell said Sweeney’s conduct still merited sanction, prosecutors determined.

“Although this office appreciates that Granite Solutions promptly filed these overdue campaign finance reports, the organization’s initial failure to file these reports violated campaign finance law and deprived the public of timely access to this information during the 2024 election cycle,” the letter from the Department of Justice reads.

Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill, who is in her first term in Concord but who has sat on Lebanon’s city council for two decades, was meanwhile fined $1,000 for failing to “timely file 2024 election reports that excluded improper expenditures.”

According to its cease-and-desist order, the Attorney General’s office first sought “additional information” about Liot Hill’s use of political committee funds in late December 2024.

Prosecutors asked why Liot Hill, a Democrat, had initially filed reports that claimed “certain itemized expenditures,” before later removing them in amended reports. Specifically, they sought to understand why Liot Hill reduced what had been listed as a $3,000 contribution to herself down to $731 in an amended filing, and why she’d claimed spending on clothing and to hire a cleaning company as campaign expenditures.

In February, Liot Hill wrote prosecutors she’d initially claimed expenses tied to registering her car for campaign travel, because she considered the cost of maintaining her vehicle “reasonably a campaign expenditure.” At the same time, Liot Hill acknowledged it wasn’t appropriate to use campaign money to pay for “urgent care, home heating oil, and grocery store items,” which she said had been “inadvertent.”

Prosecutors said Liot Hill also acknowledged she’d initially included three expenditures for gifts for campaign volunteers as political expenses because she’d believed they were “promoting the success of a candidate” before later removing them after concluding they were “possibly being considered personal in nature.”

“Outside of a few express statutory exceptions, campaign funds cannot be spent for personal purposes,” O’Donnell wrote in the cease-and-desist order. He also warned Liot Hill to file accurate reports in the future, including “recording contributions and loans from yourself to your committee and ensuring that no expenditures are made for personal subsistence.”