Olga Kharif and Stephanie Lai | (TNS) Bloomberg News

Donald Trump headlined an event billed as the unveiling of a crypto platform promoted by the Republican nominee and his sons, putting the spotlight on a niche digital-asset sector with a history of controversy.

The project, World Liberty Financial, will be part of the decentralized finance segment of digital assets and is supposed to help with financial security and being able to transact freely, Trump’s son Donald Jr. said in an X Spaces livestream on Monday.

“It’s a real problem that needed to be addressed, and honestly I think this is the way,” Donald Jr. said after comments from his father. The launch came a day after the former president emerged unscathed from a second apparent assassination attempt, the latest shock to roil the presidential contest.

The Republican nominee has pivoted to courting the digital-asset sector in search of donations and votes amid a tight race for the White House, even vowing to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.” His stance is an about-face given that he previously denounced Bitcoin as a “scam.”

On the goal of becoming the key crypto hub, Donald Trump said: “If we don’t do it, China is going to do it. China is doing it anyway. But if we don’t do it, we’re not going to be the biggest, and we have to be the biggest and the best.”

Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. began promoting World Liberty Financial on X and Telegram in recent weeks. Decentralized finance — or DeFi — is an arcane crypto sector, where people trade, lend and borrow digital assets peer-to-peer using automated software.

“The effort is consistent with Trump’s pro-crypto policy stance,” said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University. “It’s one thing to say you are pro-crypto, and other to launch a company in the space.”

The former president’s profile may make many more people aware of DeFi, proponents of which often claim gains in efficiency resulting from cutting out traditional intermediaries like banks. Critics argue the sector rests in a regulatory gray zone and is prone to hacks, a bugbear for crypto as a whole.

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