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Donald Trump Jr., co-founder of World Liberty Financial, during at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

SINGAPORE — World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture linked to U.S. President Donald Trump, is planning to launch new products, including a debit card and tokenized commodity assets, as the Trump crypto empire continues to grow.

The firm’s CEO, Zach Witkoff, made the announcements speaking alongside WLFI’s co-founder, Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday.

The debit card would “bridge crypto assets with everyday spending,” Witkoff told a crowd in Singapore at the Token 2049, one of the world’s largest crypto conferences. 

“We’ll be rolling out a pilot program here in the next quarter and that debit card will either be live Q4 or Q1’26,” said Zach, who is the son of Steve Witkoff, U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East under the Trump administration.

Zak Folkman, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, had reportedly teased the rollout of a debit card along with a retail application at Korea Blockchain Week 2025 last month. However, Trump Jr. and Witkoff said the company wasn’t ready to make an announcement regarding the consumer-facing app.

Witkoff said the team is also looking into the tokenization of real world commodities. 

“We’ve not only thought about it, we’re actively working on it,” Witkoff said. “I think commodities are a really interesting area for us, whether it be oil, gas, things like cotton, timber, all of those things, frankly, should be traded on chain.”

World Liberty Financial describes itself as a decentralized finance protocol and cryptocurrency company, and it began publicly trading its crypto token WLFI in September. 

The company has also launched a stablecoin dubbed USD1, which says it is pegged to the U.S. dollar and backed by short-term U.S. government treasuries. 

The Trump crypto empire 

World Liberty Financial’s USD1 has already become the fifth-largest stablecoin in the world, with a market capitalization of approximately $2.7 billion.

The growth comes amid a broader embrace of crypto from President Trump, who has backed policies welcomed by the industry and appointed crypto advocates to his cabinet in his second term.

Bitcoin’s price has risen over 80% in the last 12 months amid buoyant investor sentiment surrounding President Trump’s re-election and a more positive U.S. regulatory environment on crypto.

In addition to being involved in World Liberty Financial, Trump has launched his own meme coin, called $TRUMP. Involvement in these crypto ventures has led to accusations of corruption, conflicts of interest and self-dealing from opposition lawmakers, as well as calls for ethics investigations.

On Wednesday, Trump Jr. had in part, acknowledged some of these concerns, saying that the World Liberty Foundation was not a political organization. 

However, he added that the company’s aim is to benefit America’s national interest, and that the USD1 stablecoin would help support the purchasing of U.S. treasuries and help create and maintain dollar hegemony. 

“We’re flying to every single corner of this globe, convincing people to onboard to USD1 which, in effect, convinces those people to go buy U.S. Treasuries, and it’s great for the U.S. dollar,” said Witkoff.

World Liberty Financial co-founders on $1.5 billion digital coin deal, growth of USD1 stablecoin

The team announced Wednesday that USD1 would be launching on an additional blockchain network, Aptos.

Data in June had found that demand for USD1 on centralized exchanges had been muted. While USD1 had drawn significant volume on decentralized exchanges, more than half of its liquidity came from just three wallets, raising questions about real demand.

The stablecoin market is vast with USD1 facing stiff competition from existing giants such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.

The WLFI has also seen price volatility since it began trading.

World Liberty Financial announced in August that technology firm ALT5 Sigma would begin buying large quantities of its digital token as part of a WLFI treasury strategy. 

As part of the deal, World Liberty would receive shares in ALT5, according to securities filings, in return for $750 million worth of $WLFI coins.

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Trump backs off sending National Guard to San Francisco after Huang, Benioff phone calls

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Trump backs off sending National Guard to San Francisco after Huang, Benioff phone calls

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he hosts a Rose Garden Club lunch at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 21, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

President Donald Trump said in a post on Thursday that the National Guard was preparing to “surge” San Francisco, but he was swayed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Salesforce Marc Benioff and others to hold off on the deployment.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he also spoke with Democratic Mayor Daniel Lurie, who “was making substantial progress” on crime.

“Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great,” Trump wrote.

The reversal marks a major political win for the city of San Francisco and Lurie, who is in his first term.

“The president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco,” Lurie said in a statement. “Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning.”

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Lurie, a moderate Democrat, has taken a different approach with Trump than other California officials, like Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Governor Gavin Newsom, who publicly fire back at the president’s administration. Instead, Lurie consistently does not evoke Trump by name publicly or privately.

In recent addresses on the potential for a deployment, Lurie has touted the city’s progress on business development and crime, often citing data that shows San Franciscans feel the city is on the right track.

“We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” Lurie said.

The potential Guard deployment became a larger flashpoint when Benioff told the New York Times that he’d support Trump’s call for federal troops to be sent to San Francisco.

His sentiments were publicly supported by Elon Musk and David Sacks, high-profile techies with close ties to the Trump administration.

On Friday, facing mounting criticism, Benioff backtracked.

“Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” he posted on X.

A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent fires a non-lethal round at protesters as they clear a path for vehicles to enter Coast Guard Island on October 23, 2025 in Oakland, California. Federal agents have arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area for immigration operations.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The data show a changing tide in the city.

Crime rates are down 30% from 2024, homicide levels hit their lowest levels in 70 years and car break-ins haven’t been at current levels in 22 years.

Meanwhile, event bookings and tourism are on the rise, residential real estate is becoming more scarce and the office market is heating up.

Business momentum in the city is largely built on the AI boom, post-pandemic. New CBRE data show venture funding in 2025 is expected to surpass the record reached in 2021, thanks in large part to AI investments in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

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Trump admin not negotiating equity stakes with quantum firms: Commerce official

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Trump admin not negotiating equity stakes with quantum firms: Commerce official

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick speaks at a business reception at Lancaster House in central London, with attendees including government ministers from both the UK and US and representatives from major UK companies, as part of the second state visit to the UK by US President Donald Trump. Picture date: Thursday Sept. 18, 2025.

Jordan Pettitt | Via Reuters

The U.S. government is not in talks with quantum computing companies to take equity stakes in the firms in exchange for federal funding, a Commerce Department official told CNBC.

“The Commerce Department is not currently negotiating equity stakes with quantum computing companies,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The denial comes after the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said that the Trump administration was in talks with companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum.

During trading on Thursday, Rigetti was up 7%, IonQ was up 7%, D-Wave was up 13%, and Quantum Computing was up 5%.

The Trump administration has taken recent equity stakes in companies and industries seen as vital to U.S. national security.

In August, it took a 10% stake in Intel, the nation’s leading semiconductor manufacturer. It also took a 15% stake in MP Materials, which mines rare earth elements. China has restricted exports of rare earths.

Experts say that the U.S. government’s growing interest in taking stakes in private companies is unprecedented in recent decades.

Trump administration officials such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have argued that the government should benefit from a company’s success, especially where federal funds are involved.

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Quantum computing has attracted significant attention in recent years, with some of the most powerful institutions in the world spending millions in a race to develop and build the first useful and practical quantum computer, which could be completed in the next five years, according to optimistic predictions.

When there is a useful quantum computer, it would be able to do tasks that would require so much computing time on a traditional computer that it would be infeasible, such as discovering molecules that could be useful medicines or factoring large numbers.

Right now, there isn’t anything useful that quantum computers can do. The machines are purely for research.

But governments keep a close eye on the technology because it has military implications, including the potential to be able to decipher encrypted military communications.

Although the industry is attracting billions in investments, including from the federal government, it has not generated significant revenue yet.

Quantum computing companies generated under $750 million in revenue in 2024, according to a McKinsey report.

On Wednesday, Google claimed a quantum breakthrough in which it conducted research that showed that a quantum computer can run an algorithm over 13,000 times faster than a traditional computer, and that it could be verified by a second quantum computer, an advancement over past research.

Google shares jump after announcing quantum computing advancement

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Super Micro shares fall 6% on weak preliminary results

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Super Micro shares fall 6% on weak preliminary results

Charles Liang, CEO of Super Micro, speaks at the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 1, 2023.

Walid Berrazeg | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Super Micro Computer shares fell 6% on Thursday after the company released weak preliminary results for its fiscal first quarter of 2026.

The server maker said it expects to report $5 billion in revenue for the quarter, down from the $6 billion to $7 billion guidance that the company had previously issued.

Super Micro said “design win upgrades” pushed some expected first-quarter revenue to the second quarter.

“We see customer demand accelerating, and we are gaining AI share, reiterating revenue of at least $33B for FY 2026 with the expectation of delivering more.” Super Micro CEO Charles Liang said in a statement.

Super Micro said it has had “recent design wins” of more than $12 billion, and that delivery has been requested during its fiscal second quarter.

The company will provide further updates on its expected second-quarter deliveries and revenues during its earnings call on Nov. 4, when it will officially report its first-quarter results.

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Super Micro year to date stock chart.

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