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The Trump family’s decentralized finance project could make it difficult to advance cryptocurrency interests in Congress, says Variant legal chief and Blockchain Association board member Jake Chervinsky.
“World Liberty Financial will make it way harder to get market structure legislation done in the Senate, where we need 7 Democrats to vote yes, and for whom a pro-crypto vote will be politically challenging (to put it mildly) no matter what the bill says about policy,” Chervinsky said Tuesday on X.
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His remarks follow the trading debut of World Liberty Financial’s governance token WLFI on Monday, which has boosted the Trump family’s net worth by at least $5 billion on paper. It is now the family’s most valuable asset, roughly twice the value of its real estate empire, which Fortune earlier estimated to be worth $2.65 billion.
While the Trump family’s WLFI holdings remain locked, and realizing its gains may prove challenging, the wealth boost is likely to strengthen conflict of interest arguments by Democrats and ethics watchers.
Ranking Senate Banking Committee member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) last month had already expressed opposition to cryptocurrency market structure legislation, citing alleged Trump corruption.
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“We need crypto regulation, but we don’t need regulation written by the crypto industry that supercharges this kind of corruption,” she told MSNBC. “We need regulation that limits the corruption and the ability of elected officials to trade in it, that also limits the ability to blow up the economy with crypto.”
Reacting to reports of the wealth boost the Trump family has received from the recent WLFI launch, Warren said Tuesday on X, “It’s corruption, plain and simple.”
Senate Republicans, led by Senate Banking Committee Chair Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), presented a draft cryptocurrency market structure bill in July that they said expanded on a bill passed in the House in the same month.
The draft bill, the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, focuses on clarifying the Securities and Exchange Commission’s role in regulating the cryptocurrency market and would exempt certain cryptocurrency assets from securities laws. The Senate Banking Committee is targeting Sept. 30 for a markup hearing on the draft that would allow members to vote for amendments.
