Trump crypto tie-up fuelled family windfall, investor losses

Last summer, a money-losing digital-payments firm with a history of legal troubles seized what its leaders thought was a big opportunity: a deal with the Trump family’s crypto platform.

ALT5 Sigma Corp., a blockchain firm with fewer than two dozen employees, suddenly pivoted to buying virtual tokens issued by World Liberty Financial. World Liberty – originally founded by President Donald Trump, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and their sons – was taking a stake in ALT5 and appointing Zach Witkoff its new chairman. To buy World Liberty tokens, the company raised $750 million from heavyweights including hedge funds Point72 Asset Management and ExodusPoint Capital Management.

The WLFI transaction came together in just weeks, according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. Internally, it seemed like a major coup, especially after an attempt to woo World Liberty with a no-limit credit card partnership had failed earlier in the year, the people said.

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Retail investors snatched up the stock, looking to ride the wave of the new powerful connections. The company, which was worth roughly $100 million in the month before the deal, suddenly cracked $1 billion in market value. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president’s two oldest sons, heralded the transaction by ringing the Nasdaq opening bell.

Nearly a year later, the buzz is gone. ALT5 has changed its name, its CEO and cycled through three auditors. The company now known as AI Financial Corp. is worth less than $60 million and faces getting kicked off the Nasdaq stock exchange. The tokens it bought at 20 cents each have slumped to about 6 cents apiece.

The ALT5 deal brought more than half a billion dollars to members of the Trump family – one of the single biggest inflows of crypto income to the family documented yet. Last year, the president earned more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency businesses, according to his latest financial disclosures. More than $550 million came from World Liberty alone.

Investors who bought ALT5 shares last August, meanwhile, have lost more than 90%.

“Neither Eric nor Don have any involvement in ALT5, nor have any visibility to the company,” a spokesperson for the two Trump brothers said in a statement. “Neither have ever been on the board, know anything about the leadership team or have ever been involved in their operations.”

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ALT5 was struggling even before tying its success to the fortunes of World Liberty’s WLFI tokens. It hadn’t turned a profit since becoming a public company through its acquisition by a Las Vegas-based opioid-treatment firm that was previously an appliance recycler. Behind the scenes, ALT5 was also dealing with law-enforcement authorities in Rwanda, where in May 2025 a court found one of its executives liable for money laundering.

It’s unclear how much the Trump family or any of its business partners knew about the turmoil. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in an emailed statement that the president’s assets are “held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions” and that “there are no conflicts of interest.”

The World Liberty transaction has only added to ALT5’s troubles. The tokens have plummeted about 80% since they started trading. In recent weeks, ALT5 explored a sale of its operations to a closely held firm, Prime Delta Corp, affiliated with one of ALT5’s original founders, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named because the matter wasn’t public. A potential sale of the company’s core business to a Japanese startup fell apart in mid-July.

In an interview, AI Financial chief executive officer Tony Isaac said the company is in a financially strong position.

In the coming weeks, Isaac will face a new dilemma: The company’s trove of 6.9 billion WLFI tokens, worth about $380 million, will become tradable on 12 August. If AI Financial were to sell any of its stash, it could push down WLFI’s price even further. The company may look into ways to monetise its holdings without selling, Isaac said.

“We have a lot of cash available to use, and also our tokens will be freed up,” he said.

Isaac also issued a public statement earlier this month saying that the company’s media portrayal has at times been “misleading” and that “World Liberty Financial is a valued strategic partner.”

Credit card

ALT5 executives began wooing World Liberty Financial in early 2025, according to some people with knowledge of the matter. At first, the company prepared a pitch for a World Liberty-branded credit card without spending limits, according to a March 2025 draft presentation seen by Bloomberg News. ALT5 would provide the technology, it said. One reason ALT5 would make a great partner, according to the presentation, was its adherence to global financial regulations.

The credit-card pitch went nowhere, but ALT5’s pursuit of a crypto tie-up continued. Later in the year, the firm considered joining the list of small publicly traded companies that were starting to stockpile virtual currencies. It first considered accumulating tokens tied to the messaging platform Telegram, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions, until an investment firm called Alliance Global Partners helped it strike the WLFI agreement.

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The deal brought a windfall to the Trumps. ALT5 raised $750 million, mostly to buy World Liberty tokens, which weren’t available for public purchase at the time. Under World Liberty’s terms of service, 75% of proceeds from sales would go to the Trump family – meaning the transaction would bring more than half a billion dollars to the First Family.

As part of the deal, World Liberty also handed ALT5 a stash of virtual tokens worth about $750 million in exchange for a stake in the company. The value of that combined trove of tokens has plummeted by more than half, according to the company’s latest filings.

World Liberty co-founders also took on leadership positions at ALT5. Zach Witkoff became chairman of ALT5, and Zak Folkman, a fellow co-founder of World Liberty, later became a director. The company planned to add Eric Trump to its board, but walked back the idea, disclosing plans to designate him instead a board observer, which typically confers the ability to sit in on meetings without voting.

Eric Trump was previously listed on ALT5’s leadership page, but Bloomberg News reported in late April that the information had disappeared from the page. A person close to him, who asked not to be identified and was discussing internal matters, said that his board-observer role never materialised.

David Wachsman, a spokesman for World Liberty Financial, said that “while the digital-asset industry is currently in a downturn that is affecting many public equities with crypto treasuries,” the company is “confident in the long-term value of the WLFI governance token and have recently taken steps alongside our community to ensure a healthy market supply for years to come.”

Legal troubles

A close review of ALT5’s history would have revealed several details that might give a cautious investor pause.

While the company’s roots were in Canada, it’s officially based in Las Vegas. Founders Jean-Francois Amyot and Jason Wong are subject to US Securities and Exchange Commission sanctions that permanently prohibit them from being officers or directors at US public companies. Neither founder held an official title at ALT5 once the company became a publicly traded entity, but both played key roles in its operations, according to two people familiar with the company.

In 2015, a federal judge ordered Amyot and businesses he controlled to return almost $6 million in illicit profits and pay a $1 million penalty to settle allegations that he pumped up the price of US penny stocks and illegally cashed in. Amyot never showed up to his trial, the SEC said.

Almost two years later, Canadian authorities sentenced him to three months in prison and ordered him to pay more than $11 million after he pleaded guilty to market manipulation and conspiracy connected to the same US companies. Amyot did not provide a comment.

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Wong, the other founder, was among a group that the SEC in 2009 accused of hijacking defunct or inactive companies and fraudulently selling billions of shares. A federal judge ordered Wong and his alleged co-conspirators to pay back millions of dollars in ill-got gains, interest and civil penalties. Wong’s role at ALT5 hasn’t been previously reported, and his name doesn’t appear in the company’s securities filings. Wong didn’t respond to a request for comment.

ALT5’s legal problems in Rwanda involve frozen funds and money-laundering accusations. Its head of Canadian operations, Andre Beauchesne, faces seven years in prison after he was found liable for money laundering and didn’t attend court proceedings or present a defence, the company said. ALT5 has said it’s appealing the decision. Beauchesne didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The firm has argued it was a victim of fraud in Rwanda. It was duped by a financial institution in the African nation and lost more than $3 million, ALT5 said in a previously unreported statement to law enforcement reviewed by Bloomberg News.

Although the company went to the Rwandan national police, authorities froze its accounts. According to the statement, ALT5 “acted in good faith in all stages.”

The turmoil continued after the World Liberty deal. In the year since World Liberty executives took board roles at the former ALT5, the company has cycled through three auditors and reshuffled its executive leadership. All told, AI Financial lost more than $300 million in fiscal 2025, according to its annual report. Its shares haven’t traded above $1 since May.

Despite the carnage, some shareholders are sticking with the company.

Vincent Deriu, a certified public accountant in New York, said he bought about $30 000 of ALT5 shares in September only to see 90% of the stock’s value vanish over the course of its nearly yearlong rout. Deriu said he was hanging on anyway, expecting the project to still do well in the long term.

“There’s no purpose to give out now,” he said, adding that the appearance of a Trump family affiliation gave him confidence. “For me, it gives it a certain level of credibility.”

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