By Miles Klee
As Donald Trump makes headlines by threatening to send more legal U.S. residents (and even citizens) to a gulag in El Salvador, his crypto fortune continues to grow. And his family is doing business with some decidedly suspect investors who may see unlimited upside in cozying up to the man who is rolling back the rules of the industry.
In addition to Trump and First Lady Melania launching his-and-hers meme coins, the Trump family leads the decentralized finance exchange World Liberty Financial, which has sold at least $550 million worth of its first digital token, $WLFI. The venture, in which the president’s sons Barron, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr. all have vague official titles, has raised corruption concerns because it offers an easy way to funnel money to the Trumps: DT Marks DEFI LLC, a company linked to the family, has the right to 75 percent of revenues from token sales. That means bad actors in the crypto space can essentially pay them off with the expectation of favors in return — all while the Trump administration continues to deregulate the crypto sector.
One prominent crypto investor, the Chinese-born entrepreneur and billionaire Justin Sun, has spent at least $75 million on $WLFI and serves as an advisor to World Liberty Financial. Following this generous investment, a month into Trump’s second term, the Securities and Exchange Commission froze its civil fraud case against Sun and his companies. Market observers were left to wonder if he had bought up a functionally worthless asset to secure a reprieve from his legal troubles.
More recently, on April 4, according to an exclusive analysis by the corporate watchdog Accountable.US, which was shared with Rolling Stone, World Liberty Financial sold another $25 million worth of tokens to Dubai-based DWF Labs. Their buy-in of 250 million $WLFI for $25 million worth of USD Coin, a digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar, came three days before Trump’s Justice Department announced that it was disbanding a team that had previously investigated cases of crypto fraud, abandoning any “litigation or enforcement actions that have the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets.”
Editor’s picks
It just so happens that DWF once came close to being removed from Binance, the biggest global crypto exchange by daily trading volume, when a team of investigators at the company concluded it was engaged in fraud known as “wash trading,” or self-trading to create the false impression of market activity in order to lure investment. But Binance overruled that conclusion, and the firm has denied any fraud. It did not immediately return a request for comment.
DWF’s deal with World Liberty Financial could theoretically help shield it from regulatory scrutiny under the Trump regime. The investment came with the announcement that the firm would soon establish a New York office, a move that that it said in a post on X “reflects our deep confidence in the U.S. as a driving force in institutional crypto adoption.” The strategic purchase instantly made the DWF the 23rd-largest holder of $WLFI tokens, which, according to terms and conditions, are “non-transferable and locked indefinitely in a wallet or smart contract.” World Liberty further advises investors to “accept the risk that once you’ve paid the purchase price, your interest in the Token may decline and you have no expectation of resale of the Token.” In other words, those who buy $WLFI can’t currently sell it on the open market, and it’s not clear if they’ll ever have the chance, nor do they know if the tokens will someday have monetary value.
DWF’s managing partner is Uzbekistan-born Andrei Grachev, who on the day before the transaction posted to X, “We’re making history now,” adding, “Stay tuned.” The day after the DOJ closed their crypto investigations unit, he posted, “I am enjoying market nowadays, it is freaking volatile, real Wild Wild West,” and told a follower “it is a crime szn bro.” Grachev formerly led the Moscow-based Russian branch of the crypto exchange Huobi, now HTX, an office that opened in partnership with Russian state-owned bank VEB’s digital center for promoting crypto and blockchain tech. He stepped down as CEO of Huobi under a cloud of suspicion around his alleged link to a $4 billion crypto pyramid scheme and accusations of failing to repay debts totaling more than $150,000. Before that, he was a vice president at the Russian Association of Cryptoeconomics, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain (RACIB), a nonprofit closely linked to VEB.
As noted in research from Accountable.US, DWF has come under scrutiny for alleged market manipulation. In 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had responded to a 2023 lawsuit by the SEC over alleged misuse of customer funds and illegal operations within the U.S. by beefing up its market surveillance team and hiring outside financial investigators to root out fraud. These investigators found that DWF, a “VIP” client of Binance, had “manipulated the price of YGG and at least six other tokens, and made over $300 million in wash trades in 2023,” violating Binance’s terms and conditions. After the team recommended removing DWF from the platform, Binance instead had the team itself investigated and concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” of the alleged market manipulation, then fired the lead investigator, with others laid off over the next few months.
“Something smells rotten about the Trump administration squashing its crypto crime unit one business day after a Russia-tied foreign investor suspected of illegal market manipulation poured millions into one of the opaque Trump family crypto ventures,” Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk tells Rolling Stone. “President Trump has deliberately left the barn door open for potential corruption and self-enrichment by maintaining ties to his largely unregulated crypto interests, and even jumping into more since taking office. If the President’s business is going to continue openly taking foreign money this way, including from likely criminal elements, he must be transparent about what these foreign investors are asking for in return.”
Grachev did not immediately return a request for comment about what prompted DWF’s $25 million investment, or what sort of partnership he envisions between DWF and the Trump family’s crypto exchange.
While DWF has denied any wash trading activity, it advertises itself as a “market maker,” a term likewise used by four cryptocurrency financial services firms ensnared in a sting last October after the FBI created its own token, “NexFundAI,” and hired these companies to promote the asset. Some of these firms were particularly brazen about advertising illegal methods of boosting trade volume through wash trades — and of the market makers charged with “allegedly wash trading and/or conspiring to wash trade on behalf of NexFundAI,” one of them, CLS Global FZC LLC, was sentenced with a fine of $428,059 and three years of probation just before the DOJ dissolved its crypto fraud investigation team.
As for Binance, which was banned in the U.S. in 2019 for regulatory reasons but maintains a restricted U.S. branch (unavailable in 16 states and territories), a pattern of U.S. lawsuits and enforcement actions against the exchange may be coming to an end. In February, the SEC paused the 2023 lawsuit that had triggered the internal probes into potentially fraudulent self-trading by DWF and other Binance clients.
Representatives for the Trump family have held talks about World Liberty Financial acquiring a stake in Binance’s U.S. arm while the company’s billionaire founder and former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, presses the administration for a pardon on his 2023 conviction for violating U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements. His plea deal on that charge saw him step down from his position and serve a four-month prison sentence, while Binance, which also pleaded guilty, was hit with a $4.3 billion fine. Binance executives have continued to advocate for reduced U.S. oversight on crypto as it tries to rebuild its presence in the country and strike a deal with World Liberty. One possibility under discussion, The Wall Street Journal reported, would be for the exchange to list a so-called “stablecoin” token from the Trump family venture, a move that could add billions to their wealth. (Weeks ago, World Liberty unveiled USD1, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar.)
Mega-rich crypto backers and companies, critical of the SEC’s law-and-order approach to crypto under President Joe Biden, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign coffers last year. He has rewarded their support by loosening regulation, appointing crypto-friendly finance officials, and pushing for initiatives including a strategic government reserve to hold bitcoin and other blockchain assets. Such tokens rocketed higher in value following Trump’s reelection in November, but those gains have largely been erased, in part due to the economic shocks of the president’s confused tariff threats.
Nevertheless, Trump and his pro-crypto allies have maintained a close partnership with the industry, and the SEC and DOJ have proven willing to dramatically shift policy as befits questionable entrepreneurs including Sun, Zhao, and Grachev, who once flaunted his affluence with a photo of a DWF-branded Lamborghini on X. Unsurprisingly, DWF’s stablecoin project, Falcon Finance, has separately established ties to Trump’s crypto play. On April 11, a week after DWF locked down $25 million worth of $WLFI, Grachev wrote on X: “Happy to announce that @FalconStable just listed $USD1 by @worldlibertyfi as acceptable collateral.” On Wednesday, he trumpeted the news of DWF’s New York expansion, shouting out Eric Trump.
It sounds as if, amid all the chaos and constitutional crises he’s caused in Washington, the president can still make friends with people looking out for his bottom line.
We want to hear it. Send us a tip using our anonymous form.
Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2025 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.
English