Will Democrats crack down on Trump family’s WLFI crypto businesses?

Mid-August saw the progressive wing of Democrats intensifying criticisms of Donald Trump’s family WLFI crypto businesses.

Over the past week, several high profile Democrats have levied harsh criticisms of Trump and his family’s connection to WLFI. In addition to a highly publicized spat with NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party appears to be increasingly obsessed with the Trump family business.

Democrats look to crack down on Trump family’s crypto businesses, namely WLFI

The slew of democrats who have voiced concerns over Trump family’s crypto businesses range from Senator Elizabeth Warren through to Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, nut many lesser known voices on the Democratic side of the bench are heeding growing calls from their constituents to look into Trump family crypto business.

Recently, his family’s newest connection to a treasury entity called ALT5 Sigma has raised the specter of concern among house Democrats.

ALT5 is a fintech and blockchain services company co-founded by Tony Isaac in 2018. It recently welcomed several close Trump family and allies onto its board, including son Eric Trump, who in August of this year accepted a board position with ALT5 Sigma, along with several other prominent Trump family allies like Zak Witkoff, son of United States special ally to the Middle East Steven Witkoff.

The relationship highlights the potential for corruption within the world’s highest office, with Democrats arguing that Trump family crypto insiders are profiting from his role in the administration.

Earlier this year, Eric Trump co-founded World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a cryptocurrency entity whose mission it is to advance US-pegged stablecoins and boost America’s global role in digital finance and DeFi infrastructure.

As part of the partnership between ALT5 Sigma and WLFI, the former has agreed to purchase $1.5 billion worth of WLFI tokens, a governance token associated with the WLFI entity itself.

It remains unclear how or what WLFI actually does, beyond advocate for US-backed stablecoin infrastructure, leading many to worry that the merger could be used as a way to curry favor within the White House.

The details of the WLFI sale and its role within the Trump family ecosystem has raised concerns among Democrats, who warn that crypto is being used by the President and his extended family to increase their wealth behind closed doors.

According to the agreement signed on Aug. 11, ALT5 received $750 million worth of WLFI tokens at a valuation of $0.20 a token, and will directly inject an additional $750 million in cash following the registered direct sale of WLFI when it goes public as part of a treasury operation. Part of this money will be spent to acquire more WLFI tokens, in a flywheel that seems, at least from the outside, unscrupulous to Democrats.

After the deal, ALT5 ended up with about 7.5% of the total WLFI token supply in its corporate treasury. Yet following the announcement, stock prices for ALT5 dipped from $9 to $5 but gradually rose to $7 by Aug. 13, as the market came to terms with reaction to the terms of the fundraising it is now engaged with on behalf of WLFI.

Trump family and business dealings

President Trump alongside his family occupies two mutually complementing positions: he is a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and a key figure in policymaking in the crypto space. Under the current administration, the White House has held a crypto summit, which established the national digital asset strategy. Trump signed a series of bills and orders, setting the legal framework for the stablecoin industry, encouraging investments in crypto ETFs, protecting the crypto business from debanking (a practice that existed during Joe Biden’s tenure), and pledging not to sell Bitcoin owned by the U.S. government.

On top of that, the new staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped Biden-era legal cases targeting key cryptocurrency companies like Binance, Circle, and many others. The SEC has invited the crypto industry to work on regulation together, with many in the crypto industry itself hailing Trump as the most crypto friendly President in US history.

At the same time, his family’s wealth has ballooned since he and his sons started dealing in digital assets. In June, Forbes evaluated Trump’s crypto fortune at $1 billion, which is nearly 20% of his overall net worth, the wealth tracker states. After the release of this evaluation, new cryptocurrency ventures tied to the the Trump’s have brought in even more money.

According to an April 2025 report in the New York Times, entrepreneurs in the crypto industry have been secretly fielding offers from Trump-connected individuals to invest in WLFI.

“Everything we do gets a lot of exposure and credibility,” said WLFI co-founder Zak Folkman, explaining the synergy the firm competes for in the still emerging DeFi space.

Other crypto ventures associated with the Trumps include s Bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin, a treasury company associated with Trump Media, and memecoins Official Trump and Melania.

Yet a report in the FT found that several wallets connected to the Melania coin pre-sale profited over $100 million from the token soon after launch.

All of this worries Democrats.

Democrats double down on scrutiny into Trump family crypto dealings

In June of this year, Senator Jeff Merkley called for a ban on “Trump-style crypto corruption,” voicing concern that Trump’s unscrupulous attention to detail and sheer diversity into crypto is rife for potential misuse.

In July, Democrats also held an Anti-Crypto Corruption Week in the White House after Trump used the Presidential office to host several of WLFI’s largest holders, including, at the time, controversial billionaire crypto investor Justin Sun.

That panel was overseen by Maxine Waters and Stephen Lynch who assessed that Trump has “stripped away the oversight mechanisms meant to keep crypto corruption in check, clearing the way for him and his allies to profit off their crypto cons in the shadows, unchecked.”

Fellow right leaning Republicans have also voiced similar concerns. According to right-leaning investor and author of the influential crypto missive Operation Chokepoint 2.0, Nic Carter, the release of the Official Trump token “opens the door to secretive foreign buyers trying to curry influence with our leaders.” Carter points out that a potential conflict of interest can be exploited vis-a-vis WLFI and other mechanisms, underscoring that any President creating memecoins opens the possibility to rampant violations of the emoluments clause, which bars direct foreign investment in the US political process.

All of this is to say that the Democrats, who are entering the fall mid-term election season in the hopes of retaking the House of Representatives, are now bringing increased scrutiny on Trump and his family’s crypto businesses. What will come of these and other entities if and when the Democrats resume control of the House, and perhaps even White House, remains to be seen.