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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.

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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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Microsoft sales chief Althoff gets new role as CEO of company’s commercial business

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Microsoft sales chief Althoff gets new role as CEO of company's commercial business

President of Microsoft North America Judson Althoff speaks on stage during We Day at KeyArena on April 23, 2015 in Seattle, Washington.

Mat Hayward | Getty Images

Microsoft‘s top-ranking sales leader, Judson Althoff, has been promoted to a bigger role as CEO of the company’s commercial business.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, wrote in a memo on Wednesday that marketing and operations will move under Althoff’s organization. Most of Microsoft’s revenue comes from commercial offerings such as productivity software subscriptions and cloud-based Nvidia chips for running artificial intelligence models.

“Our success depends on enabling commercial and public sector customers and partners to combine their human capital with new AI capabilities to change the frontier of how they operate,” Nadella wrote in the email. “To accelerate this, we will increasingly need to bring together sales, marketing, operations, and engineering to drive growth and strengthen our position as the partner of choice for AI transformation.”

Althoff, who joined from Oracle as president of Microsoft’s North America business in 2013, was already among Microsoft’s highest-paid executives, receiving over $23 million in total pay in the 2024 fiscal year. His most recent title was executive vice president and chief commercial officer.

Under Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014, Microsoft has more frequently used the CEO title for select executives.

LinkedIn has had a CEO since Microsoft acquired the company in 2016. Last year Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of the DeepMind AI lab now owned by Google, and made him CEO of a group called Microsoft AI that includes Bing. And GitHub, which Microsoft bought in 2018, had a CEO until last month, when Thomas Dohmke left the company.

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Microsoft launches AI and productivity software bundle for consumers

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Microsoft launches AI and productivity software bundle for consumers

Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, speaks at a company briefing in Redmond, Wash., on May 20, 2024. Microsoft unveiled a new category of PC that features generative artificial intelligence tools built into Windows, the company’s world-leading operating system.

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

Microsoft said Wednesday that it will stop promoting a consumer subscription for artificial intelligence services and introduced a bundle blending AI features with traditional productivity apps.

The software company introduced Copilot Pro at $20 per month in early 2024. Microsoft 365 Family, which allows for up to six users and 6 terabytes of cloud storage, goes for $12.99 each month. The new Microsoft 365 Premium tier essentially combines both and will cost $19.99 a month.

“Other AI tools stop at chat — we deliver that plus so much more,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s consumer marketing leader, wrote in a statement provided to CNBC.

Microsoft is not discontinuing Copilot Pro, a spokesperson said.

Technology companies have been trying to capitalize on the broad interest in tapping generative AI models to compose documents and create videos.

Read more CNBC tech news

Microsoft offers a free version of its Copilot assistant, in line with Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, all of which sell paid subscriptions for consumers.

Microsoft 365 Premium comes with higher usage limits than the free Copilot and productivity software subscriptions targeting consumers.

As was the case with Copilot Pro and with consumer Microsoft 365 subscriptions, the new offering enables conversations with Copilot in Microsoft’s Office apps such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Microsoft is sweetening the new offer with forthcoming access to two AI reasoning agents that so far have only been available to corporate workers with Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions.

OpenAI relies on Microsoft’s Azure cloud to run its ChatGPT assistant and its underlying models, and Microsoft incorporates the models into its Copilot. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI. The companies are partners that also compete.

Microsoft reported 89 million consumer subscribers for Microsoft 365 services in the June quarter, up 8%. Revenue growth from those products has accelerated for three quarters in a row, reaching 20% in the June quarter.

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Microsoft hikes price of top-tier Xbox Game Pass Ultimate by $10

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Microsoft hikes price of top-tier Xbox Game Pass Ultimate by

A gamer plays soccer title Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 on an Xbox console.

Sezgin Pancar | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Microsoft is raising the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription price by 50% to $29.99 per month, effective immediately, the company announced Wednesday.

The $10 spike comes with a slew of changes to all its Game Pass plans, though its Essential and Premium plans will remain the same price at $9.99 and $14.99, respectively.

The Game Pass Core tier will no longer exist and instead will be rolled into the Essential tier, while Standard subscribers will move to the Premium tier.

“As we continue to evolve Xbox Game Pass, we’re focused on delivering more value, more benefits, and more great games across every plan,” the company said in a release. “Whether you play on console, PC, cloud – or all three – there’s a Game Pass option designed to fit your playstyle.”

The new Ultimate tier would cost $359.88 over the course of a year, with the Premium tier at $179.88 yearly and the Essential tier at $119.88 yearly.

Comparatively, PlayStation Plus Premium’s highest tier is set at $159.99 annually, with the Extra tier at $134.99 and the Essential tier at $79.99.

Read more CNBC tech news

Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will now have access to over 400 games and more than 75 day-one releases each year, with over 45 new titles added on Wednesday.

Ubisoft+ Classics is joining the Ultimate tier to offer a selection of Ubisoft games, including “Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown,” “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” and more. Users will also see improved streaming quality up to 1440p and a new rewards program.

Premium subscribers will also get an expanded library of over 200 games, while the Essential tier will receive over 50 titles. Both will additionally gain unlimited cloud access, which was previously only available through the Ultimate plan.

Microsoft previously reported a record 34 million Game Pass subscribers in 2024 and a total revenue of almost $5 billion over the last fiscal year. Gaming accounted for 8% of the software giant’s total revenue in 2025, company data showed.

Growth in gaming has been bolstered in recent years by Microsoft’s landmark $75.4 billion acquisition of video game publisher Activision Blizzard in 2023, the largest deal in the company’s history.

However, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S are still struggling to compete against Sony‘s PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch 2.

The company reported decreasing console sales in FY 2025, with Xbox hardware revenue down 25% over the last year.

Several Xbox consoles will see price hikes in the U.S. starting in October for the second time this year. The Series X and Series S will increase to $699 and $399, respectively.

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