Eric Trump, a son of US President Donald Trump, may no longer be a board member of investment company ALT5 Sigma as part of a deal with World Liberty Financial.

According to an Aug. 25 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), ALT5 Sigma designated Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Folkman as board observers rather than members.

The company reported that Trump’s position was “in order to comply with Nasdaq’s listing rules” and was still subject to approval by stockholders.

The filing appeared to contradict earlier notices that Trump had joined the board. In an Aug. 11 announcement, ALT5 Sigma said it would raise $1.5 billion for World Liberty Financial’s corporate treasury — a deal that included Trump becoming a director on the board. At time of publication, he was listed as a board director on ALT5 Sigma’s website. 

ALT5 Sigma is a Nasdaq-listed fintech company that provides crypto infrastructure services. It originally operated under the name JanOne, a biotech-focused company, before rebranding in mid-2024 to focus on digital assets.

According to SEC filings, ALT5 Sigma received $750 million worth of WLFI tokens from the crypto company, one million shares, and “pre-funded warrants” to purchase up to an additional 99 million shares as part of the deal.

Cointelegraph reached out to ALT5 Sigma and World Liberty Financial for comment, but had not received a response at time of publication.

Related: Trump-tied crypto company ALT5 Sigma denies SEC probe rumors

Zach Witkoff, the son of the US president’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and another World Liberty Financial co-founder, was listed as chairman of the ALT5 Sigma board.

The US President’s ties to crypto ventures are increasing his family’s wealth

Since Trump took office in January, his family’s wealth has increased by potentially billions of dollars through crypto ventures such as World Liberty Financial, his personal memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP), his family-backed mining company American Bitcoin and deals through Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of the Truth Social platform.

In the last eight days, shares of American Bitcoin began trading on the Nasdaq, and World Liberty unlocked 24.6 billion WLFI tokens — a move that gave the Trump family’s token stake a valuation of about $5 billion at the time.

World Liberty is facing scrutiny from some users who claimed the company locked up their tokens due to “high risk” from their crypto wallets.

Tron founder Justin Sun, one of the company’s biggest backers, reported on Thursday that World Liberty had blacklisted his wallet address after transferring 50 million WLFI tokens to cryptocurrency exchange HTX. One WLFI user has proposed opening up the matter to a governance vote. 

Magazine: Can Robinhood or Kraken’s tokenized stocks ever be truly decentralized?

Eric Trump is deepening his role in digital assets with reported plans to attend a shareholder meeting in Tokyo, public predictions about bitcoin’s price, and new corporate ventures that extend the Trump family’s crypto push into Asia.

Bloomberg reported Friday that Trump will join a Sept. 1 shareholder meeting of Metaplanet, a Japanese company following Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly, MicroStategy) playbook, citing people familiar with the matter. Trump was appointed as a strategic adviser in March. His Tokyo stop will apparently follow an appearance at the Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong on Aug. 28–29.

A day earlier, Trump appeared at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, where he described himself as a “bitcoin maxi” and said he now spends more than half his time on crypto projects. He predicted bitcoin would reach $175,000 by the end of 2025 and eventually climb past $1 million. He argued that bitcoin and blockchain could address flaws in traditional finance, such as slow payments and settlement processes.

The Financial Times reported onAug. 15 that American Bitcoin — a miner and treasury company co-founded by Eric Trump and his brother Donald Trump Jr. — is exploring acquisitions of listed firms in Japan and Hong Kong to use them as vehicles for stockpiling bitcoin, following the playbook pioneered by Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy. The company is preparing to go public in the U.S. through a reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed Gryphon Digital Mining. Eric Trump is a co-founder and the chief strategy officer.

American Bitcoin emerged in May from a reorganization of American Data Centers, a Trump-linked entity that absorbed rigs from Canadian operator Hut 8. The firm has said it aims to become the world’s most efficient bitcoin accumulation platform, combining active treasury management with new coin production.

The Trumps’ crypto ambitions extend beyond Eric Trump. Trump Media & Technology Group, parent of Truth Social, raised more than $2 billion in the second quarter to create a bitcoin treasury. President Donald Trump disclosed in June $57 million in income from World Liberty Financial, a crypto startup launched last September.

Together, these moves highlight how Eric Trump and his family are aligning themselves with crypto at a time when Japan and Hong Kong are competing to attract digital asset firms.

Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) will approve the first yen-denominated stablecoin as early as this fall. Meanwhile, Hong Kong has introduced the Stablecoins Ordinance, a regulatory framework that requires fiat-referenced stablecoin issuers to obtain a license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).

Eric Trump announced that World Liberty Financial, the DeFi platform linked to President Donald Trump and his family, will take a significant treasury stake in the Official TRUMP memecoin.

He also confirmed that the controversial Trump-branded wallet recently unveiled by the team behind the memecoin would not continue development.

Wallet project nixed

The announcement comes less than 2 days after Trump brothers denounced the controversial wallet project that claimed to be “official.”

The team, Fight Fight Fight LLC, and NFT platform Magic Eden began promoting a Trump-branded wallet and trading application on June 3, only to face swift denial from the Trump Organization.

The Trump family publicly stated they had no connection to the wallet, prompting World Liberty Financial (WLFI) to issue a cease-and-desist letter to the firms involved.

The now-abandoned app had promised access to TRUMP trading alongside high-profile cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL).

However, its seems the project quickly unraveled when Trump’s sons made clear that the family brand was being used without permission.

The backlash culminated in legal action from WLFI, which called the product misleading and unauthorized. In the wake of the announcement, the wallet effort has been shelved.

In a statement, World Liberty characterized the TRUMP token and its own platform as “distinct projects with a common mission,” signaling a desire to maintain synergy while distancing itself from unapproved ventures.

Strategic treasury investment

WLFI will acquire a substantial long-term position in the TRUMP token, aligning it with the platform’s treasury strategy. Eric Trump said the investment reflects a shared commitment to combining digital asset innovation with patriotic values.

The move comes less than a month after Trump hosted over 200 top TRUMP holders at one of his private golf clubs, a gathering that drew criticism from some lawmakers who accused the President of monetizing his political base through crypto.

Meanwhile, WLFI has also begun distributing its own stablecoin, USD1, to wallet addresses tied to early WLFI token sales.The stablecoin is positioned as a foundational component of WLFI’s broader decentralized finance ecosystem.

Although the Trump wallet project has been scrapped, WLFI’s escalating role in the memecoin’s growth suggests deeper coordination between the Trump-linked crypto ventures are far from over.

Mentioned in this article

New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he will create a digital advisory council to attract jobs and investment to the Big Apple and position it as the “crypto capital of the globe.”

“This is not about chasing memes or trends,” Adams told the inaugural New York City Crypto Summit on May 20. “We want to use the technology of tomorrow to better serve New Yorkers today.”

“We have experts right here, and they are going to help us navigate solutions that serve our city,” he added. “The age of tokenization, which includes crypto and blockchain and other fintech innovations, that age is here, and we’re going to continue to move forward with it.”

Adams didn’t share further details on the advisory group, but said a council chair and key policy recommendations would follow in the next few weeks.

We’re taking the next step in becoming the Crypto Capitol of the WORLD, hosting our city’s first-ever Crypto and Digital Assets Summit! Join us LIVE as we get started: https://t.co/iwO6ThkaSB

— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) May 20, 2025

On May 12, Adams announced financial services company Figure and private equity firms Traction and Scale would be assisting the city in its crypto efforts.

New York City will also be exploring whether certain services and taxes can be paid via crypto, according to Adams, along with using blockchain tech to manage sensitive information such as birth certificates and death records.

“Bringing blockchain security capabilities to the city means that birth certificates and death records can remain private but accessible to New Yorkers and their next of kin,” Adams said.

“We want to bring jobs of the future to our city today. That means supporting the development of a more diverse, equitable, inclusive tech ecosystem. We must embrace this emerging technology and build on the success of our economy,” he added.

Crypto legislation proposed in New York 

New York State lawmakers have already introduced several bills to regulate crypto. In April, Assemblyman Clyde Vanel introduced a bill to amend the state’s financial law to allow New York State agencies to accept crypto as payment. 

However, the legislation is yet to reach the state’s full House or Senate.

New York state Senator James Sanders Jr proposed the Blockchain Study Act in February, which would create a crypto task force to investigate the current state of crypto in the State. It has yet to advance past the House. 

Related: Wintermute opens New York office, citing improved US crypto rules

Adams made digital assets a large part of his policy platform after assuming office in January 2022 and announced a plan to accept his first three paychecks in Bitcoin (BTC).

He was indicted on corruption charges over alleged illegal donations from the Turkish government, but Justice Department officials stepped in and directed local authorities to intervene. The case was dismissed with prejudice on April 2, meaning it can’t be reopened.

An increasing number of US states are also working on crypto-related legislation, with at least 18 considering bills to establish a strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Two states, New Hampshire and Arizona, have successfully passed the legislation, according to Bitcoin Reserve Monitor.

Magazine: Crypto City: Guide to New York

“There’s a famous saying that sometimes the enemy of your enemy is actually your best friend,” Eric Trump told the crowd at Consensus in Toronto, Canada. “That was the Trumps with the crypto community. And I think the banks made the biggest mistake of their lives.”

The son of U.S. President Donald Trump and co-founder of bitcoin BTC$103,626.58 mining company American Bitcoin is also an adviser to World Liberty Financial (WLF), which recently launched a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, USD1, that has already reached $2 billion in market capitalization.

Co-founders of WLF joined Trump on stage on Friday as they announced that USD1 was now operable across multiple blockchains through Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).

Trump painted a vivid picture of personal grievance turned into ideological conviction, claiming he was “canceled” by major financial institutions for his political views which then got him interested in crypto as a shield against financial gatekeeping.

“So many of the banks have been weaponized and I was case in point,” said the son of the U.S. president. “I was probably the most canceled person for doing absolutely nothing wrong, only because we had a political view, and a political view that might not have been popular with some of the big financial institutions and guys, they came after me like I was a dog.”

USD1, he said, is a patriotic financial tool for people in unstable or corrupt regimes.

“It gives so much freedom of financial choice, especially to markets and countries where people have never had any kind of financial freedom, had never had any kind of financial independence, might be in a country where it’s war torn, where it’s subject to corruption, it’s subject to ridiculous inflation,” he said. “Every single day they go to work and their money is being burned under their mattress, and all of a sudden, we give the world the ability to be on the US dollar backed one to one by US Treasuries.”

Earlier today, lawyers representing WLF pushed back against scrutiny from U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, the leading Democrat on a panel responsible for investigating corruption and mismanagement, who had asked about the ownership and investment structure for Trump-affiliated entities, including WLFI, in a letter last week.