Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on December 8, 2024
By Michelle Conlin
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Several key players in President-elect Donald Trump's new cryptocurrency venture head to Abu Dhabi on Monday for the largest bitcoin gathering in the Gulf region as the digital currency sets record highs.
Speakers include the president-elect's son Eric and billionaire Steve Witkoff, the new White House envoy for the Middle East and co-founder of World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform launched in September that Donald Trump and his family helped form.
Eric Trump will deliver Tuesday's keynote address at the Bitcoin MENA conference, which is projected to draw more than 6,000 people, and will then hold a "whale-only" chat in the conference's VIP lounge, according to the event's agenda.
Witkoff will also speak separately to that more exclusive crowd, which requires a $9,999 "whale" pass, a nickname for large players who have potential to move a market.
The president-elect is World Liberty Financial's chief crypto advocate, and sons Eric, Don Jr. and Barron are ambassadors, according to the WLF website. Company filings show Donald Trump is entitled to 22.5 billion WLF tokens and a share of its revenues.
"The bitcoin conference carries a lot of significance for crypto as it's one of the longest-running conferences focused on bringing our industry together," said Marshall Beard, chief operating officer of Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by Trump backers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
"It’s been incredible to see the rise of bitcoin alongside the growth of the conference ... and crypto became a major campaign issue in this year’s presidential election."
Other speakers also have close ties to World Liberty Financial, including Justin Sun, the 32-year-old Chinese founder of blockchain platform Tron.
Three weeks after Trump won the Nov. 5 election, Sun posted on X that he bought $30 million worth of WLF tokens, making him the venture's largest investor. Sun was charged with crypto-related fraud and securities violations under the Biden administration.
The Gulf gathering is occurring at an inflection point for the industry as Trump, once a crypto skeptic, has vowed he will be the "crypto president" and make America the new "crypto capital of the planet."
Buoyed by these promises, bitcoin smashed records last week when it hit $100,000.
Trump also named a White House czar for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, former PayPal executive David Sacks, a close friend of Trump adviser and megadonor Elon Musk.
Musk, whose companies include X, SpaceX and Tesla, spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump in 2024, records show. Other technology and digital asset veterans also gave millions to candidates friendly to the industry, according to analytics firm Breadcrumbs.
Trump's 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, will address the conference on "A Life of Politics with the Man Closest to Donald Trump."
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who served a four-month U.S. prison sentence this year for crypto-tied money-laundering law violations, will also hold a whale session at the conference.
Trump, his family members, other speakers and their firms did not respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting By Michelle Conlin; editing by Megan Davies and Cynthia Osterman)
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