Secret Deals

Secret Deals, Foreign Investments, Presidential Policy Changes: The Rise of Trump’s Crypto Firm
World Liberty Financial has eviscerated the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in ways without precedent in modern American history.

The pitch from “ZMoney” arrived on the encrypted messaging app Signal just days before Donald J. Trump’s presidential inauguration.

“ZMoney” was Zachary Folkman, an entrepreneur who once ran a company called Date Hotter Girls and was now representing World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency firm that Mr. Trump and his sons had recently unveiled. Mr. Folkman was writing to a crypto startup in the Cayman Islands, offering a “partnership” in which the firms would buy each other’s digital coins, a deal that would bolster the startup’s public profile.