Trump-backed World Liberty Financial taps former Coinbase exec as business lead

World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm with links to the Trump family, has announced the hiring of Ryan Ballantyne as chief business officer. 

The new man is an experienced Wall Street executive and recently served as an executive at Coinbase. The announcement comes as the crypto venture seeks to go into tokenized real estate and apply for a banking license.

A Wall Street OG comes into Trump’s crypto firm 

The announcement was made in an X post and described Ballantyne as an experienced head with a career that cuts across asset management, derivatives, capital markets, and digital assets over the last 30 years. He last worked at Coinbase, where he served as head of Corporate Client Strategy.

Co-founder and CEO of World Liberty, Zach Witkoff, expressed his joy in a one-line reply to the announcement post on X. Not much has been said about the scope of Ballantyne’s new role or when he will start.   

The title of chief business officer already implies the company’s present focus: revenue, partnerships, and institutional relationships.

The hire epitomizes a busy H1

In July, World Liberty did a recap of its activities in the first half of a year that started with the firm supplying over $310 million via its WLFI Markets lending product. Then it launched USD1 on Solana and organized a World Liberty Forum at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. 

The company also announced it was moving beyond pure decentralized finance and into banking proper, as it filed for a national trust bank charter.

World Liberty Financial has taken steps to solidify its hold on tokenized real estate. In February, it asked Securitize, a tokenization specialist, to structure and issue tokens to accredited investors for loan revenue from a Trump International hotel project in the Maldives. 

Hiring a capital-markets OG fits the bill for a company looking to offer structured products to institutions.

The scrutiny of World Liberty 

Ballantyne will be joining the Trumo-linked decentralized finance project at an awkward moment. Based on a New York Times investigation, World Liberty Financial was given $100 million by a suspect in a UK money-laundering scheme. The man, Guren “Bobby” Zhou, has not been charged.

Based on the reporting from the Times, a company owned by members of the Trump family will receive $75 million out of the $100 million. 

According to Patrick Prinz, a compliance expert, Zhou’s profile ought to have raised alarms leading to AML checks before receiving such an amount. A spokesman for World Liberty, David Wachsman, said the company obeyed all relevant laws.

WLFI continues to struggle

The market reaction has not been positive. WLFI is currently at $0.0549, with a market cap of ~$1.74 billion. That is an 88% drop from its record high of $0.46. 

The coin also hit a record low on August 9, trading at $0.0508. It remains to be seen whether Ballantyne can use his 3 decades of experience to transform expansion announcements into consistent revenue and a more stable token.

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