jakiro
Author: Wu Shuo Blockchain
This interview focused on the origin of World Liberty, the growth and application of the stablecoin USD1, RWA tokenization planning, team and capital layout, and the construction of regulatory and regional markets with WLFI CEO and co-founder Zach Witkoff and COO and co-founder Zak Folkman.Zak stated that its goal is to use integrated applications (transfer/consumption/encrypted transactions/card payments) and USD1 stable currency as the core to serve user groups that are not fully covered by traditional finance.
Reasons for joining the game and Zach’s personal background
Colin Wu: Zach, first of all, can you briefly introduce your upbringing or family background?
Zach Witkoff: I was born in New York City and raised by my parents, Steve and Lauren, who were both very hardworking parents.I grew up in my family’s real estate business and was on construction sites of all types.It was during this process that I saw many inefficiencies in the traditional financial system.There was no concept of cryptocurrency at the time, but it started to spark my interest in how to improve the system.
Editor’s note: Steve Witkoff is an American billionaire, real estate investor and long-term ally of Trump. He was born in New York in 1957 and has a law degree.He founded the Witkoff Group, amassed a fortune in real estate, and was appointed special envoy to the Middle East after Trump was elected president in 2024, despite having no previous diplomatic experience.As a special envoy, he participated in international affairs such as mediation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
Colin Wu: How did you first get into the crypto industry?Was there a critical moment, or a certain person, that made you switch from the family business to blockchain?
Zach Witkoff: In my case, I’ve been investing in crypto since about 2016, 2017.World Liberty was the first crypto business I actually participated in running.A large part of the reason why I got involved in this field is that I saw with my own eyes that some of my friends had their accounts terminated by banks and banned from platforms. I myself have experienced similar situations.This realistic situation became a real opportunity for me to enter the encryption industry.
The origins and early development of the World Liberty project
Zach Witkoff:About two years ago, I was sitting down with Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and they were feeling down.I asked what happened, and they told me that my account had been “terminated” by two of the largest banks in the United States, and that I had also been “banned” by the platform.We then started discussing solutions and concluded that a more democratic system was needed, centered around stablecoins.With stablecoins, basically no one will tell you “your account has been closed” (unless you are included in the sanctions list of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC).No one will dictate who you can pay, why, and how.The starting point of World Liberty is to truly return financial dominance to users.
attached: Zach Witkoff, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump were interviewed on the same stage on Fox News, saying that the family and team had encountered account termination by large banks and “deservice” of the platform about two years ago, and therefore decided to reconstruct cross-border settlement and retail payment paths with stablecoins as the core.In an on-site interview at TOKEN2049 Dubai, WLFI co-founder Zach Witkoff also said that the birth of World Liberty Financial originated from the observation of traditional financial pain points: first, lack of transparency, and the internal operations of large banks are not open enough; second, lack of accessibility, about 1.4 billion people around the world still do not have bank accounts; third, cross-border efficiency is low, and the comprehensive cost of obtaining US dollars in some economies can be up to 9%.Eric Trump also said that the traditional loan process still relies on paper and lengthy approvals, with a common loan cycle of 90-120 days; on-chain transfers can be completed in seconds, with lower fees and higher transparency.He also mentioned that the family once had banks cancel the accounts of the Trump family due to political reasons. Therefore, he firmly believes that cryptocurrency and their efforts at World Liberty Financial will make those banks regret it, leaving the banks behind, completely changing the financial system, and ending the hegemony of banks.
Colin Wu: I heard that in 2024, before the election, you are raising capital in Asia first, but it is not easy to get started.Then we also saw that Justin Sun had a larger investment?
Zach Witkoff: We have a lot of respect for Justin.We are friends with him.He’s built a pretty good business on Tron; the last time I knew, the stablecoin inventory on Tron was around $82 billion.We think he does a good job with the business and we have a friendly relationship with him.This is roughly the relationship.
Zak Folkman: Hi, I’m the COO and founder of World Liberty Financial.When I was in law school, I learned a lot about contracts and transactions.When I read Ethereum’s white paper, I understood that Ethereum and smart contracts would revolutionize everything from finance to technology to global legal transactions, allowing two parties to transact without having to meet or even trust each other.Once I understood this, I immediately threw myself into it.Our other co-founder Chase Hero and I are long-term business partners, and we invested heavily in Ethereum first and then Bitcoin.In the early stages, we advised many successful start-up projects and invested through our family office, and have been involved in the investment and consulting of many projects to date.
How World Liberty helps people without a bank account
Colin Wu: So, the next question is, can you tell us about World Liberty’s current products?Specifically how they help users, especially without a bank account.
Zak Folkman:I think the goal of World Liberty Financial is to provide people with financial trading tools that prevent them from having their accounts terminated by their banks.But more importantly, giving financial tools to those who are underbanked or completely unbanked, and also hope that these people can get more value from the service than traditional financial institutions.I think people who watch your channel probably agree that cryptocurrencies offer a faster, more transparent, safer, and cheaper way to transact.
This is why we all love cryptocurrencies so much.Combine this with the concept of asset self-sovereignty or self-custody and you get something that has never been available before.When you think of cryptocurrency, it is always seen as something separate from the traditional financial system.Historically, if you wanted to use cryptocurrencies in a store, at the gas station, while buying groceries or drinking coffee, it was often very difficult.Although some exchanges have launched bank cards, even then, their results are not ideal.
Our goal is to provide a simple application, like Cash App, WeChat or any kind of Venmo, that allows users to easily store and send funds, combined with cryptocurrency transactions such as swapping, staking, yield farming, etc., to provide users with a simple card that allows them to spend cryptocurrency at the point of sale anytime, anywhere, making traditional bank accounts completely unnecessary.So we realized that if people were going to trade cryptocurrencies every day, they needed to have a stablecoin that could be used globally and always be worth one-to-one against the U.S. dollar.To that end, we launched USD1, which has become the fastest growing stablecoin in history.
Zach Witkoff: As Zak said, our USD1 is the fastest growing stablecoin and we’ve hit $2.4 billion right now.The last time I checked, we had over $500 million in trading volume in a 24-hour period, and USD1 was only 90 days old.In addition to stablecoins, as with all the other initiatives Zak mentioned, we are actively building a very robust asset tokenization platform focused on RWA (real asset tokenization).Members of the Trump family and I come from the traditional real estate industry, and we all have sizable real estate portfolios that are ideally suited to tokenization.I think this is a very interesting area worth exploring.But we don’t stop there.We’re looking at the oil and gas industry, the overall commodities industry.Our belief is that World Liberty wants every asset in the world to be tokenized.It’s a better technology and a better system.
Misunderstandings about the cooperation between USD1 stablecoin and Binance
Colin Wu: You mentioned the USD1 stablecoin.The community says that USD1 has great cooperation with Binance and BNB Chain. Is this true?And when did Binance join and how did they support USD1?We also know that Binance raised funds on USD1, so why did they choose USD1?
Zak Witkoff: This is actually a relatively common misunderstanding.We are not saying that Binance owns a stake in World Liberty, nor are we a partner.In fact, the partnership is mainly due to the extremely high demand for USD1 on Binance.If you go to PancakeSwap or on BNB Chain, you will see that the demand for USD1 is very strong.People are naturally pairing USD1 with meme coins over there, and also exclusively using USD1 through the Binance Launchpad.Therefore, Binance mainly provides services based on user needs.As for the $2 billion deal, Binance only accepted the money and was not a party.We convinced MGX to use USD1 for settlement because it was safer, faster, and more transparent.
They completed a $2 billion transaction using USD1 with no transaction fees and in less than two seconds.Clearly, this is a better way to transfer funds, especially for large international payments.So, all Binance does is receive the funds.If there is no demand on Binance, they may burn the money or convert it to cash.But due to huge market demand, the funds continued to stay on Binance.
Zak Folkman: Beyond that, we actually have some really great partnerships across the BSC ecosystem.Projects like ListaDAO, PancakeSwap, and almost all protocols on Binance Smart Chain are very willing to cooperate with us.In my opinion, USD1 is not only the fastest growing stablecoin, but also the only stablecoin with a large and cult following.
Projects like Sahara AI, for example, used USD1 as part of their crowdsale, which shows that our community is very active, very engaged, and loves to trade.Zach just mentioned that our daily trading volume, the reason why it is so high is because people are not just holding this coin for a long time, they are actively using it, and USD1 is circulating very quickly.Therefore, many projects on Binance Smart Chain want to cooperate with us, mainly because they know that our project has extremely high user loyalty and has followers similar to meme coins.Moreover, we are a stablecoin.This brings a very unique feature to the stablecoin market that may never have been seen in any stablecoin.
How the World Liberty team moves forward
Colin Wu: My next question is, how many people are currently working on the World Liberty team, and how do you accelerate the team’s work?
Zak Folkman: We’re always hiring.However, we don’t recruit for the sake of recruiting.We only recruit top talent, absolute star employees.So, every employee we hire is the best in their field, from our analysts and developers to our chief compliance officer, general counsel, every position we hire for is looking for people who are not just “just a fill-in-the-vacancy” but who bring a unique perspective.That’s why we’ve been able to achieve so much with a very lean team.We have about 30 full-time team members, maybe a little more now, but roughly 30 people.From our ecosystem managers and business development people to our senior management team, everyone is top talent, which is what allows us to be so successful, grow quickly, and yet remain a small team.
Zach Witkoff: We all wear many hats.No job in the company is too big or too small.I am the CEO and Zak is the COO, and we are both involved in the smallest tasks of the company while also overseeing the largest projects.I think this is very critical.We believe that the most successful companies of the future will have smaller teams, especially as technologies like AI become more widely used.I personally believe that in five years it will be extremely difficult to run a company with over a thousand employees efficiently.I think the trend going forward is a more efficient workforce.
How ALT5 Sigma Helps the World Liberty Ecosystem
Colin Wu: The next question is about ALT5 Sigma, can you explain more about this company and how ALT5 can help the World Liberty ecosystem?
Zach Witkoff: Regarding ALT, we announced a deal where they will acquire $1.5 billion in World Liberty tokens.This deal helps our ecosystem in multiple ways.First, this company has some very powerful technology, especially around stablecoins, that will help USD1’s flywheel effect become even greater.
Secondly, the company’s financial strategy now is primarily long-term holding, and they actively support this token, and we are introducing it to Nasdaq and allowing it to trade freely.The company plans to continue acquiring more tokens in the future.So, obviously, having a big buyer in the market that continues to buy the token and support it is very beneficial for the ecosystem.So we’re really excited.I will join the board as chairman and together we will roll up our sleeves and work hard.
What impact Trump’s policies will have on the entire crypto industry
Colin Wu: My next question is, what do you think of Trump’s encryption policy?What positive impact do you think Trump’s policies will have on the crypto industry as a whole and in the future?
Zach Witkoff: Let me start by saying we separate business from politics.We are a business and completely apolitical.But, obviously, President Trump is one of the greatest presidents in history.He proposed clear regulatory policies and established clear rules.Therefore, these policies are very beneficial to the industry.
Throughout the development of cryptocurrencies, and especially under the Biden administration, we have essentially been operating blind.People are moving their operations overseas because it makes no sense to start a crypto business in the U.S. It’s just not worth the risk. It’s ridiculous.So, President Trump signed the Genius Act.I think the market structure will become clearer in the future.And I have my respect and appreciation for the entire government team, I think they’ve done a fantastic job.
Zak Folkman: Just to add to that, I think what we’ve seen before in the crypto industry, at least in the United States, is that it’s divided between two parties.And let everyone feel that President Trump has done an amazing job, he has completely eliminated the differences between the two parties in the entire industry.He brought everyone on the same page, completely setting aside their political beliefs.
So, if you look at the way he’s moved the industry forward, especially outside of the United States, he’s gotten governments around the world to adopt and reflect the policies that his administration has put in place.I think everyone in the crypto industry around the world, or those who would benefit from crypto but don’t realize it yet, should express their sincere gratitude to him.
Will World Liberty do more events or community building in Asia?
Colin Wu: I have one last question, will World Liberty do more activities or community building in Asia, especially in the Chinese community?
Zak Folkman: Yes.We are actually traveling.Next week, some members of our team and I will be traveling to Hong Kong to visit many different players, investors, and potential partners in the crypto industry.Then, Zach, myself, and the rest of our team will travel to South Korea for Korea Blockchain Week.I think we will have a very big announcement during Korea Blockchain Week.
Zach Witkoff: We also have a bigger announcement coming up at Token 2049 in Singapore, where we will be on the main stage.So we have a lot of big news and initiatives coming out that I think the world will be very excited about.
Colin Wu: Yes, in the next two months, there will be many meetings in Asia. The meeting schedule in the next two months is too full.
Zak Folkman: We are obviously an American company and all of our members are American citizens.However, we also realize that the main market for the global crypto industry is in Asia.We have many friends and partners in Asia.There are a large number of World Liberty Financial token holders across various regions in Asia.So we spent a lot of time there, and we’ll continue to spend more time there as World Liberty continues to grow.
So, thank you to all our Asian friends for supporting us.We’re so grateful for all your support and we’ll be traveling to Asia as much as possible and looking forward to seeing more of you in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, or wherever.
Zach Witkoff: I think that’s one of the great joys of starting World Liberty.Sometimes Zak and I and Chase will walk down the street and meet members of our community and they’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much, this is the best community.” It really makes every day special for us.In fact, that’s what we do—to give people the tools to live better and be happier.As Zak said, dear community, we love you so much.If you see us in Asia, be sure to come and say hello, we are very accommodating.We may fly five to six hundred hours a year, and we believe it is very important to fly to places where we do business around the world and really go there to understand the problems and develop appropriate solutions.So yes, we will continue to work hard for the community, for the projects, and for World Liberty.I believe the community will be very pleased with our results.
