A crypto firm linked to former U.S. President Donald Trump, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), is launching a regulated tokenization deal tied to the Trump International Hotel and Resort Maldives. The offering will tokenize loan-revenue interests, allowing accredited investors to buy a slice of the resort loan's projected interest payments rather than ownership of the property itself. The deal converts future debt service into a digital security, with the resort's completion targeted for 2030.
The tokenization is being handled by Securitize, a regulated digital securities platform with clients like BlackRock and KKR, embedding the product within a compliant infrastructure. This structure includes transfer restrictions and controlled secondary trading, making it resemble a private placement more than a freely traded cryptocurrency.
The financial scale of Trump-linked crypto activity is substantial. According to the Wall Street Journal, WLFI earned the Trump family at least $1.2 billion in cash over 16 months, plus $2.25 billion in paper gains from crypto holdings. A Trump family-owned entity, DT Marks DEFI, is set to receive 75% of the revenue from $WLFI token sales after costs, creating a revenue stream from issuance itself, separate from the future resort yield.
This venture occurs against a backdrop of a major legal and financial dispute. In recently unsealed court documents, JPMorgan Chase admitted to closing the Trump family's banking accounts shortly after the January 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. The Trump family has filed a $5 billion lawsuit, alleging politically motivated "de-banking," and claims this exclusion from traditional finance directly spurred their pivot to cryptocurrency ventures like WLFI.
The Maldives tokenization deal has also attracted political scrutiny. A controversial $500 million investment from an Abu Dhabi Sheikh for a 49% stake in WLFI prompted Senate Democrats to request a CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) probe, framing it as a potential national security matter.
