10 billion power and money transactions, Trump moves his own currency to Wall Street

2025-09-01 20:53:32

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Is ALT5 really raising funds, or is it selling a wealth ticket that says "political dividend"?

Author: Lin Wanwan, Dongcha Beating

In August, among the pile of announcements on Nasdaq, there was a seemingly ordinary financing that exploded like a hidden bomb: ALT5 Sigma issued up to 200 million shares of common stock at $7.50 per share (approximately 10 billion RMB), exchanging shares for WLFI tokens, and brought Eric Trump, the youngest son of Trump, into the board.

Overnight, this financial technology company ALT5, which had an annual revenue of only $20 million, transformed into "the Trump family's listed treasury." ALT5 is not just raising funds; it is brazenly pushing the Trump family's WLFI token and its politically charged stablecoin USD1 into the U.S. securities system.

WLFI (World Liberty Financial) is not merely a startup; it is a "political mint" crafted by the Trump family.

This company was established two months before the U.S. election, and within a few months, WLFI has already brought hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to the family business through the stablecoin USD1. In other words, ALT5 is not just connecting to a stablecoin, but a whole set of political financial weapons.

The question is—Is ALT5 really raising funds, or is it selling a wealth ticket inscribed with "political dividends"?

01 The Secret Lineage of ALT5: The Interconnection of Three Forces

A company's shareholder list often reveals more than its financial reports.

The shareholder structure of ALT5 is almost a power puzzle: offshore capital, Wall Street funds, and the political token faction intertwine, making this company appear both like a fintech enterprise and a political financial experiment.

What truly gives ALT5 a gunpowder smell is this type of shareholder: the political token faction. The two representative figures are Zach Witkoff and Eric Trump.

Eric Trump needs no introduction—he is the son of U.S. President Trump, and the family's cryptocurrency industry is currently under his jurisdiction, directly entering the ALT5 board.

What deserves more attention is Zach Witkoff—co-founder of the WLFI stablecoin and currently serving as the chairman of ALT5.

If we only look at his resume, Zach Witkoff's background already determines that he is not an ordinary entrepreneur. He is the son of Steven Witkoff, a well-known real estate developer in New York, who currently serves as the U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Issues.

The Witkoff family has decades of accumulation in Manhattan's real estate sector, having held several landmark buildings, and Steven has had dealings with New York's financial and political circles for many years.

The Trump family's rise is rooted in real estate, and Steven Witkoff has long-standing connections with the Trump family in New York's real estate circle.

The relationship between Zach and the Trump family can be summarized in one sentence: real estate connections + political ties. Therefore, the relationship between Zach and Eric is not just "cooperation," but a family-style political financial alliance. If Eric Trump puts the family's political resources on the table, then Zach Witkoff is the one executing the financial landing for the Trump family. He is the key bridge in this intertwining of political finance.

Thus, the existence of these two individuals means that ALT5's development path will become increasingly politicized. It is not just pursuing business expansion but is preparing financial tools for the U.S. political cycle from 2025 to 2028. To some extent, it is part of the Trump family's "financial arsenal."

Next, let's take a look at one of ALT5's major shareholders, an offshore company registered in the Bahamas—Clover Crest Bahamas Ltd., holding about 11%.

The Bahamas is well-known; it is a famous tax haven where many wealthy individuals and companies register their businesses. The reason is simple: it allows for relaxed tax policies and avoids excessive regulatory scrutiny.

In simpler terms, Clover Crest acts like a hidden channel for the Trump family, allowing them to quietly send money to ALT5 while also isolating risks when needed.

Another force among the shareholders comes from Wall Street fund companies, such as the well-known Vanguard. These types of funds may be indirectly held by retail investors globally, as they manage large-scale index funds.

Vanguard's stake in ALT5 is not high and appears to be a passive allocation. However, the problem is: when the public sees a name like "Vanguard" on the shareholder list, they instinctively feel that this company is "legitimate" and "reliable." This is what is known as legal endorsement.

These three forces each have different logics: offshore financiers provide concealed funding channels to ensure money flows in; Wall Street funds provide facade and legitimacy to ensure the company appears "compliant and legitimate"; and the political token faction provides narrative and strategic direction, pushing ALT5 onto the global stablecoin stage.

The combination of the three makes ALT5 both clean and dangerous.

On the surface, it is a rule-abiding fintech company; in reality, it is being used as a stablecoin version of a "Trojan horse," quietly carrying political and capital ambitions under the guise of compliance.

02 The FinTech Facade—Where Does the Hidden Door Lead?

On paper, ALT5 is a perfectly normal fintech company. It holds complete licenses, offering a full suite of services including payment gateways, OTC trading, custody, and white-label exchanges, with an annual revenue of about $20 million and a gross margin close to 50%, making it a top performer in the crypto payment industry. Compliant, transparent, with impressive data, it even appears "cleaner" than many traditional payment companies.

However, what truly elevated ALT5 from a niche tool-based fintech to a global focus was the $1.5 billion financing in August 2025. Overnight, it transformed from a company merely providing APIs to becoming the "Nasdaq treasury" for the Trump stablecoin WLFI.

This means that ALT5 is no longer just a technology-selling factory but has become a key node in the globalization of stablecoins.

Why is it called a "backdoor"? The reasoning is quite simple.

First is the protection of surface identity. If the WLFI stablecoin wants to directly enter payment networks in various countries, it will almost certainly hit the high walls of central banks and regulators.

But ALT5 has existing fintech licenses, allowing it to take the lead as a "payment API service provider." Regulatory agencies see a compliant fintech, not a politically charged stablecoin.

Secondly, there is a hidden channel for cross-border settlement. ALT5 Pay's API allows merchants to accept cryptocurrencies like BTC and USDT, which can then be automatically converted into dollars or euros in the background.

If WLFI/USD1 is embedded in this process, merchants and users may not even realize they are using a stablecoin backed by the Trump family. On the surface, it is "payment technology," but in reality, it completes the infiltration of stablecoins.

Finally, there is the natural integration of a global network. ALT5 has already connected the Lightning Network and stablecoin payment systems, achieving efficiency far superior to traditional cross-border payments relying on SWIFT.

For many emerging markets with a strong demand for dollars but lacking direct access to Wall Street, ALT5 provides an invisible express lane. Through it, WLFI can quickly "sink" into global trading scenarios with minimal resistance. Thus, the significance of that $1.5 billion financing becomes clear: it is not merely expansion capital but more like a strategic deployment to pave the way for WLFI's global payment pipeline.

ALT5 can naturally continue to assure regulators, "We are just a compliant API payment company." But in the shadows, its interfaces may be becoming the tracks for stablecoins to bypass the traditional financial system.

This dual narrative makes ALT5 a typical "fintech facade." Externally, it is clean, transparent, and professional, a textbook example of fintech; internally, it is being pushed to a strategic height, becoming an indispensable piece in the puzzle of stablecoin globalization.

This may be the key reason why WLFI can quickly transition from a political concept to a real financial tool: it has found a "legitimate backdoor" like ALT5.

When the compliant facade is thick enough, stablecoins can quietly flow into merchants' and users' daily transactions, and by the time regulators truly react, that door may have already been wide open.

03 Trump's Shadow Financial Empire

ALT5 is just the tip of the iceberg; the larger landscape beneath is the Trump family's creation of their own dollar system.

They bind politics, media, finance, and mining into one: using voter communities as entry points, turning attention into assets, creating a compliant facade as a channel, and using computing power and Bitcoin reserves as ballast.

On the surface, it involves a few financings and new launches, but in essence, it is about rearranging the dollar links: entry, pricing, clearing, and reserves each have corresponding pieces.

The provocation of this landscape lies not in "decentralization," but in the redistribution of power: who defines on-chain dollars, who tells the story of asset prices, who can write it into reports, and who holds the underlying credit. This is not an experiment with a coin; it is a shadow Wall Street that bypasses traditional Wall Street.

From a political perspective, the Trump version of the stablecoin USD1 represents the financialization of political identity.

In the world of stablecoins, USDT and USDC represent the market and institutions. The former dominates global exchanges with liquidity in gray areas, while the latter wins the favor of mainstream financial institutions relying on compliance and Wall Street credit. However, USD1's positioning is entirely different—it is the stablecoin for Trump supporters.

This is a currency with a distinct political color. Its birth logic is not about "solving payment efficiency" or "reducing cross-border costs," but about binding political identity with financial assets.

For the Trump family, the strategic significance of USD1 lies in—an all-weather fundraising pool, a tool for community cohesion, and an extension of the dollar narrative. If USDT is the dollar for traders, and USDC is the dollar for Wall Street, then USD1 is Trump's dollar. It transforms a party's political identity into a circulatable financial system.

This design is highly risky and explosive. The risk lies in the fact that once there is a change in political parties or judicial intervention, USD1 could easily be labeled as an "illegal financial instrument"; the explosive potential lies in the fact that it no longer needs to build a market from scratch; as long as it can engage tens of millions of loyal supporters, it can naturally form a large, cohesive currency community.

From a media perspective, from Truth Social to meme coins, attention is currency.

If USD1 is the "financial weapon" of the Trump family, then the media is the "gunpowder store" for this weapon. Without sufficient attention and narrative, even the most perfect stablecoin design can only remain on cold, hard ledgers.

The first piece of the family's puzzle is Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). Its platform Truth Social has already become a public opinion arena for the right-wing community.

Here, political mobilization and information dissemination are highly homogenized—every opinion and speech from Trump can quickly spread on the platform. Another piece of the puzzle is meme coins. The issuance of $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins is an experiment in directly monetizing attention.

This combination of media and finance constructs a closed loop of "narrative—traffic—monetization": political events ignite public opinion → public opinion ferments on Truth Social; meme coins become emotional outlets, quickly attracting hot money; TMTG's treasury and stablecoin USD1 absorb funds, turning short-term emotions into long-term assets.

And on the financial side, it is ALT5, which writes tokens into U.S. stock reports.

The final piece of the puzzle is mining and Bitcoin reserves.

Supported by the family, American Bitcoin is initiating mergers and reverse mergers to go public, targeting resources in Asia and North America. In North America, this company mainly holds mining sites and energy pricing power.

The capital power behind the Trump faction (real estate—energy—finance) is already intricately linked with oil, gas, and infrastructure, making it not difficult to absorb BTC mining revenue. Thus, keeping the "mining production end" within its coordinated network, coupling "computing power—assets—secondary market."

Therefore, the Trump family's crypto empire is essentially a "power struggle for shadow dollars," and a provocation against the traditional Wall Street financial order.

The political layer provides identity recognition and a funding pool; the media layer generates traffic and cash flow; the financial layer writes tokens into reports; and the mining layer uses computing power and Bitcoin reserves to place the final stone on this machine.

04 Epilogue

So the real danger does not lie in USD1 itself, but in—the underground replica of the dollar has already begun to operate, and the operators are neither the Federal Reserve nor Goldman Sachs, but the Trump family.

ALT5 is the entry point, WLFI/USD1 is the banner, Truth Social and meme coins are the loudspeakers, and Bitcoin mining is the ballast. On the surface, they seem unrelated; in reality, they are interlocking to form a political financial machine operating in the shadows.

The ambition of this machine is not to create a "compliant version of USDT," but to weld finance and politics together with WLFI: turning payments into votes, making capital flows equivalent to voter flows, and allowing capital markets to directly respond to the electoral battlefield.

If Wall Street is the main palace of the dollar, then the Trump family is quietly building a hidden channel, directing the blood of the dollar toward its own parallel empire.

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