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Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):

molly0xfff@hachyderm.io ("Molly White") wrote:

The Trump family’s latest crypto scheme, “World Liberty Financial”, has the makings of the biggest clusterfuck in Web3 is Going Just Great history.

#CitationNeeded #crypto #cryptocurrency

Attachments:

• What better time to launch a transparently grifty “high-yield” cryptocurrency business than two months before your presidential election? Donald Trump, and especially his sons, have been teasing an upcoming cryptocurrency project that seems to be rapidly shapeshifting. First, they were all teasing something called “The DeFiant Ones” (a play on decentralized finance, or defi), with hashtags #BeDeFiant and tweets warning people to not “get left behind”. Then Eric Trump said something about the project involving “digital real estate”, though its unclear if he was speaking metaphorically or was actually referring to the metaverse “land” fad that more or less came and went. He did immediately follow up this statement by saying “It’s equitable. It’s collateral anyone can get access to and do so instantly,” leaving me to wonder if anyone in the Trump family has ever set foot near an average person trying to buy a house these days. Now the flim-flam family is all talking about “World Liberty Financial”, with a website promising access to “high-yield crypto investments”, a statement that should immediately set off alarm bells in anyone’s head. (remote)
• The project hasn’t even launched yet, and it’s off to a bumpy start. First, Donald Trump Jr. had to issue a statement to try to stop people from buying up all the fake tokens purporting to be associated with their murky project [I64]. Then, Twitter accounts for Lara and Tiffany Trump were both compromised and used to send tweets announcing a supposed token launch. “This is a scam!!!” tweeted Eric, himself retweeting the tweet from his wife’s account containing the scam token address. Now, CoinDesk has gotten hold of a white paper for this supposed World Liberty Financial, which they note appears to be a clone of Dough Finance, a crypto lending platform that was hacked for around $2 million just a month and a half ago [W3IGG]. The hack was not a sophisticated one, and instead exploited sloppiness on behalf of the development team. The four people who built Dough are all listed as members of the World Liberty Financial team, as are Trump’s sons (including 18-year-old Barron, who they list as a “DeFi visionary”). Zachary Folkman, a Dough Finance creator who is now listed as the head of operations for World Liberty Finance, previously ran a pick-up artist advice platform called “Date Hotter Girls”.25 You should really just read the piece by CoinDesk, they did some great reporting here. (remote)
• The project is making even the Trumpiest people in crypto nervous. Nic Carter, a crypto venture capitalist and outspoken Trump supporter, tweeted: is there something that we, as crypto twitter, can collectively do to stop the launch of world liberty coin? i think it genuinely damages trump's electoral prospects, especially if it gets hacked (it'll be the juiciest DeFi target ever and it's forked from a protocol that itself was hacked). it's also an obvious target for the SEC. at best it's an unnecessary distraction, at worst it's a huge embarrassment and source of (additional) legal trouble. so are we signing a petition or what? Commenting on the hack of the two Trump family Twitter accounts, he added: “can't secure twitter accounts but i'm sure they'll be able to protect an (already hacked) defi protocol from hacks”.26 All I can say is that if he launches this before the election and it gets hacked, it’s a strong contender for biggest clusterfuck in the history of Web3 is Going Just Great. (remote)