Behind the Trump Crypto Project Is a Self-Described ‘Dirtbag of the Internet’

[reader]

No way you can make this stuff up.

From Bloomberg / MSN

Bloomberg) -- Chase Herro has sold a lot of things in his career. Weed. Weight-loss “colon cleanses.” A $149-a-month get-rich-quick class. Now he’s adding another line to his resume: the Trump family’s crypto guru.

Herro is the dealmaker behind World Liberty Financial, the crypto project that Donald Trump and his two older sons have been promoting on social media in recent weeks, according to two people involved with the project. Herro's long-time business partner Zachary Folkman is also playing a key role. While few details about World Liberty have been released, Eric Trump said that the startup will promote “financial independence” and Donald Trump Jr. said it will “make finance great again.” Former President Trump himself posted a video saying he'd announce the details on Sept. 16. “We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind,” Trump said.

Yet Herro, a fast-talking 39-year-old who shows off his fancy cars and private-jet rides on social media, is an unknown in the crypto world. More than a dozen prominent digital-asset investors said in interviews they had never heard of him. The only crypto project with which he was publicly affiliated attracted only a few million dollars and suffered a devastating hack. A token he promoted on influencer Logan Paul’s podcast dropped 96% afterward. In one speech in 2018, he called himself “the dirtbag of the internet” and said that regulators should “kick s---heads like me out.”

“You can literally sell s--- in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story's right, because people will buy it,” Herro said about crypto in a 2018 YouTube video recorded as he drove in a Rolls-Royce. “I'm not going to question the right and wrong of all that.”

Bloomberg News sent detailed questions to a World Liberty email address. “We all see the picture you're trying to paint here and consider it at best grossly inaccurate,” a man named Jim Redner replied. “We're confident that our results will speak for themselves.” Redner said he was not a spokesperson for the company and was "just answering emails.” Herro, Folkman and the Trump presidential campaign didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Herro was introduced to the Trumps by Steve Witkoff, a real-estate developer and longtime supporter of the former president, after first meeting one of Witkoff’s sons, according to one of the people involved with the project.

When they met, Trump was reconsidering his stance on crypto. He’d once called Bitcoin a “scam against the dollar,” but in late 2022 he licensed his image for a series of nonfungible tokens – essentially, digital trading cards – featuring cartoon images of a muscular Trump. Then in July, after Bitcoin advocates raised what they said was $25 million for his campaign, Trump flew to Nashville to speak at a Bitcoin conference, where he promised to loosen regulations on the industry and create a strategic national stockpile of the cryptocurrency.

“The United States will be the crypto capital of the planet,” Trump said in the speech.

At the same time, Trump’s sons were getting curious about the industry. At the Nashville conference, Donald Trump Jr. appeared at an event sponsored by a little-known token called “Make America Great Again, Again,” though he said he had no affiliation with the project. And in June, Martin Shkreli, the former hedge-fund manager who served years in prison for securities fraud, said that he’d been talking with Barron Trump about starting another Trump cryptocurrency. Shkreli declined to comment.

 Herro is described in the white paper as the person responsible for “data & strategies.” His friend Folkman is listed as “operations lead.” Folkman used to run a service called Date Hotter Girls where he taught seminars about how to pick up women. “OK, how many guys came here to learn how to take girls home and bang them?” Folkman said in a speech in 2014. The trademark for World Liberty is registered to a company using the same address in Puerto Rico as another company run by Herro and Folkman.

Continues with photos and video

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/behind-the-trump-crypto-project-is-a-self-described-dirtbag-of-the-internet/ar-AA1qvopg

 

[Pete1111]

"Dirtbag", and proud of it.

Crypto is a way to easily transfer value in the modern age, so they say.  😂😂😂

Did I hear a washing machine switch on?

[Suckrates]

 

There's MAGA Mania out there, as MAGAts realize they got scammed by Trump AGAIN with the latest release of Crypto coins just before his Inauguaration, which the crazed MAGA's quickly scooped up.  There were also coins released by his other family members.

But since then, Trumps loyal supporters have seen their "pots of gold" dwindle as the value of these coins has dropped over 70%, and slated to drop even further.

YET, despite the value of the coins, Trump will continue to make  100 million $$  off the "administration" fees on his latest SCAM.....

MAGA NOT HAPPY !       

[stevenkesslar]

On 9/13/2024 at 12:02 PM, reader said:

Trump flew to Nashville to speak at a Bitcoin conference, where he promised to loosen regulations on the industry and create a strategic national stockpile of the cryptocurrency.

“The United States will be the crypto capital of the planet,” Trump said in the speech.

This has the potential to go far.   

Give Trump $25,000 to be POTUS.  And he'll say regulations suck and you should be able to do anything you want.  And hurt whoever you want.

I'd say there's a good chance we'll have some big crypto scandal during Trump 2.0

Trump is good at bankruptcy.   He'll figure it out.

[stevenkesslar]

On 9/13/2024 at 12:02 PM, reader said:

“The United States will be the crypto capital of the planet,” Trump said in the speech.

I actually wonder whether Trump could make the US the crypto nuclear bomb of the planet.

I think the essential ingredients are already falling into place.  The last global nuclear bomb was subprime, and derivatives thereof.  You needed a bunch of very rich White men who were convinced their shit did not stink, and they could do no wrong. Check. You needed a pliant POTUS who followed his donors and ideologues and wasn't really able to say, "You know, this is weird shit and it's gonna blow up in my face."  Check.

If I had to choose between W. and Trump and live with one for four years, I would still take Trump in a heartbeat.  As of now.  I quoted W. above, who said this is "weird shit" at Trump's 2017 inaugural.  True.  But W. was not able to figure out that the Iraq War and subprime were "weird shit" that would blow up in his face.  Very badly.  

My nephew, who is a partner in a a big firm, says they paid W. to impart wisdom on them. And W. said privately he knew subprime would blow up, but he could not control the Congressional committees that allowed it.  My nephew believed that.  I don't.  Bush is either still pretty stupid, or still good at trying to cover his tracks.  It took me like 60 seconds to explain to my smart nephew, who mostly sympathizes with Trump and ilk, that this was all done with at least the tacit approval of all these federal regulators, who W. himself appointed.  Starting with Greenspan.  Oh, and all those Congressional committees were run by Republicans when the subprime bomb was being built.  So W. owns that big fucking mess.  Even if he still wants to deny it.

There is nothing like that to blame on Trump.  No Iraq War.   He'll say Ukraine would never have happened had he been POTUS.  Killing Obamacare would have arguably been as big a mess.  But that never happened.  Thanks, Senator McCain.  

The closest Trump came was Jan. 6th, kind of after his Presidency was over.  There was a really long and funny article I read about how, in the final days, Sidney Powell and some of her amateur law team showed up at the White House to try to persuade Trump to give breaking The Constitution one more try.  Trump wanted to, of course.  He called the "official" White House counsel in to the meeting.  And they literally started swearing at each other.  I don't recall the exact quotes.  But you had smart lawyers who worked for Trump saying, "This is bullshit.  This is stupid.  This is breaking the law.  This won't work."  They went up to the residence and pigged out on chicken fingers and talked it to death well into the evening.   

Is Trump capable of at least going along for the ride on super weird and dumb shit?  Yes, of course he is.  That's what that episode proves to me.

There was an article today on how Musk's merry band of sadists is now inside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and ready to fuck that up good.  The union that protects those workers got off a line in a press release about how Musk's "amateur code writers" have already wreaked havoc on a previously reliable and private data system.  So I don't buy for one minute that these people have any fucking clue what they are doing, even when it comes to technology.  Musk's cars are twice as likely to kill you as any other.  He fired the FAA head because he was against innovative things Musk demands, like ignoring public safety standards.

So could these people, given a few years, cook up some weird crypto shit that blows up the global economy, like subprime did?  I doubt it.  My hope is that they are going after easy targets, like USAID.  Who cares about foreign aid? Or obscure targets Trump's rich donors hate, like the CFPB.  For what it is worth, Trump has said they will keep 600 rather than 300 USAID workers, out of 10,000, who work on humanitarian programs.  Maybe he does not want to own a wave of AIDS deaths because we gut good HIV prevention programs.  So the pushback is having some, albeit minimal, impact.  Hopefully it keeps them away from Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, and other core programs. 

And hopefully it keeps them away from weird crypto shit.  But I have zero confidence that Trump, left to his own resources, would not bankrupt or blow up the planet with the help of a bunch of "dirtbags".  The cast of that potential tragedy is assembling right before our eyes.