The Trump family was entitled to roughly $500 million from a 2025 crypto deal with Alt5 Sigma, while the company — now called AI Financial Corp. — has lost more than 90% of its stock value and warned it may not survive as a going concern.
The Trump family was entitled to roughly $500 million from a 2025 cryptocurrency transaction between World Liberty Financial and a then-obscure publicly traded company called Alt5 Sigma — while ordinary investors who piled into the Trump-linked deal have since watched their holdings collapse by more than 90%.
The company at the center of the arrangement, now rebranded as AI Financial Corp. and trading under the ticker AIFC, closed at 66 cents per share on June 8, down from $8.97 on August 8, 2025 — the last trading session before the World Liberty deal was announced — according to FactSet data. That represents a 93% loss.
Under the terms of the August 2025 deal, Alt5 acquired $1.5 billion worth of crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company co-founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., among others, in 2024. World Liberty Financial disclosures show that the president and undisclosed members of his family were entitled to approximately $500 million in proceeds from that sale.
AI Financial has since warned investors about its ability to continue as a going concern. The company has cycled through three chief executives and three outside auditors since the Nasdaq celebration in August. In January, it borrowed money from World Liberty Financial and used a portion of those proceeds in an attempt to lift its own share price. That effort failed.
If AI Financial cannot sustainably raise its share price out of penny-stock territory within the next 15 trading days, it faces potential delisting by the Nasdaq.
Eric Trump said in an X post in May that he has "zero leadership or decision-making role in the company." He had been nominated to a seat on the company's board, but World Liberty withdrew that nomination following a discussion with Nasdaq, which requires a majority of listed companies' board members to be independent. Eric Trump would not have qualified as an independent director given the World Liberty deal.
Kimberly Benza, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, said in a statement that "neither Eric nor Don have any involvement in ALT5, nor have any visibility to the company," adding that neither brother has "ever been on the board, know anything about the leadership team or have ever been involved in their operations." The White House has said there are no conflicts of interest involving the president or his family in these transactions.
Attorneys for the Democracy Defenders Fund sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission in April urging the regulator to "commence an independent investigation into ALTS without delay." The SEC declined to comment on whether it has examined AI Financial's dealings with the Trump family.
"The question now is: What happened to all that money?" said Virginia Canter, chief anti-corruption counsel for the group, in an interview.
Among the institutional investors who participated in the August deal, Point72 Asset Management — the hedge fund operated by New York Mets owner Steven A. Cohen — invested $36.5 million and exited its position before the end of 2025. ExodusPoint Capital Management acquired $44 million worth of Alt5 stock and still held a portion as of the end of March, carrying a paper loss of approximately $14 million on those remaining shares. Spokespeople for both firms declined to comment.
Hong Kong-based Soul Ventures Holdings disclosed an $85 million stake in the August transaction and announced by mid-October that it had exited the position entirely. Based on open-market pricing around that time, the firm would have lost approximately $56 million to $58 million on a full exit, though Soul Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.
The Alt5 Sigma episode has emerged as a cautionary episode for investors who viewed a Trump-affiliated deal as a natural beneficiary of the current political environment. With AI Financial now trading at penny-stock levels and its future in question, scrutiny of the transaction's structure — and the disclosure obligations surrounding it — is unlikely to ease.
Sara Montes de Oca is the Editor in Chief of TechEchelon. Previously a correspondent and producer in Washington, D.C., covering business, finance, and politics.
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