How the Trump family took over a crypto firm as it raised hundreds of millions

As World Liberty Financial raised more than half a billion dollars, President Donald Trump’s family took control of the crypto venture and grabbed the lion’s share of those funds, aided by governance terms that industry experts say favor insiders. Launched last fall, World Liberty’s goal is to allow people to access financial services using cryptocurrencies and without intermediaries like banks in what is called decentralized finance, or DeFi. But it has yet to launch a public platform and has reported only a small staff, a review of the project shows. Even so, World Liberty said in mid-March it had raised $550 million selling so-called governance tokens. Most of those sales took place after Trump’s election win in November, Reuters calculations show.