Eric Trump, a son of US President Donald Trump, may no longer be a board member of investment company ALT5 Sigma as part of a deal with World Liberty Financial.
According to an Aug. 25 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), ALT5 Sigma designated Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Folkman as board observers rather than members.
The company reported that Trump’s position was “in order to comply with Nasdaq’s listing rules” and was still subject to approval by stockholders.
The filing appeared to contradict earlier notices that Trump had joined the board. In an Aug. 11 announcement, ALT5 Sigma said it would raise $1.5 billion for World Liberty Financial’s corporate treasury — a deal that included Trump becoming a director on the board. At time of publication, he was listed as a board director on ALT5 Sigma’s website.
ALT5 Sigma is a Nasdaq-listed fintech company that provides crypto infrastructure services. It originally operated under the name JanOne, a biotech-focused company, before rebranding in mid-2024 to focus on digital assets.
According to SEC filings, ALT5 Sigma received $750 million worth of WLFI tokens from the crypto company, one million shares, and “pre-funded warrants” to purchase up to an additional 99 million shares as part of the deal.
Cointelegraph reached out to ALT5 Sigma and World Liberty Financial for comment, but had not received a response at time of publication.
Related: Trump-tied crypto company ALT5 Sigma denies SEC probe rumors
Zach Witkoff, the son of the US president’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and another World Liberty Financial co-founder, was listed as chairman of the ALT5 Sigma board.
The US President’s ties to crypto ventures are increasing his family’s wealth
Since Trump took office in January, his family’s wealth has increased by potentially billions of dollars through crypto ventures such as World Liberty Financial, his personal memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP), his family-backed mining company American Bitcoin and deals through Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of the Truth Social platform.
In the last eight days, shares of American Bitcoin began trading on the Nasdaq, and World Liberty unlocked 24.6 billion WLFI tokens — a move that gave the Trump family’s token stake a valuation of about $5 billion at the time.
World Liberty is facing scrutiny from some users who claimed the company locked up their tokens due to “high risk” from their crypto wallets.
Tron founder Justin Sun, one of the company’s biggest backers, reported on Thursday that World Liberty had blacklisted his wallet address after transferring 50 million WLFI tokens to cryptocurrency exchange HTX. One WLFI user has proposed opening up the matter to a governance vote.
Magazine: Can Robinhood or Kraken’s tokenized stocks ever be truly decentralized?
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