PALM BEACH, Fla. — Attending the World Free Financial Forum at Mar-a-Lago feels less like a high-level summit and more like an intimate gathering when the guest list includes people who control trillions in assets and the future of finance.
Hidden beneath chandeliers and gold accents, the guest list reads like a who’s who of the industry’s old guard and emerging disruptors. No name brand required. Everyone seems to know everyone, or at least knows someone who knows someone.
Discussions range from the future of finance to how to solve the problems of the past – ambitious visions for tokenized assets, regulatory reform and reimagined capital markets. But just as easily, the conversation turned to the upcoming FIFA World Cup tournament and the press, consisting of some unexpected names who probably didn’t have to be there but somehow made the whole thing feel even more surreal.
The event is not specifically aimed at a U.S. audience; attendees come from multiple countries. Last week, several attendees flew directly from Consensus Hong Kong to Palm Beach to attend the World Freedom Forum. One attendee said they flew in from ETHDenver on Wednesday morning, and several others said they would fly to the Colorado conference after the forum.
“Punitive Finance”
In any other context, the event would seem like a typical cryptocurrency conference; speakers from traditional finance backgrounds explaining how they use blockchain, or why they’re discussing cryptocurrencies in a dimly lit room.
Yet context loomed: It was a conference hosted by World Freedom Financial, the cryptocurrency company started and partly owned by U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, at his Mar-a-Lago golf club, with several attendees related to his business interests. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao appeared at the event, his first appearance in the United States since receiving a pardon from Trump. Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon joked onstage that he was there because his clients asked him to be present.
Many of the panels themselves were high-level; World Free Finance co-founder Alex Witkoff brought on U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody to give the audience her background, or had Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. reiterate their past grievances with banks.
“It was forced, maybe opportunistic, but our lives have shown us how corrupt the system can be… Banks [canceled our accounts] Eric Trump claimed, “My dad wore a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat for no reason.” “We realize how outdated finance is, how punitive finance is.”
During these sessions, several speakers presented their views on the digital asset space. Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson laid out the case for the U.S. dollar to remain the global reserve currency, saying the EU was too poorly coordinated for the euro to replace the U.S. dollar and that other currencies were not up to the occasion.
“About 50% of trade today is done in dollars and another 30% in euros, [but] There is no single European debt market. They can’t even coordinate around the euro… so this is not going to be the next reserve,” she said.
China’s yuan and India’s rupee are serious contenders, but neither is free-floating, so neither currency is likely to play that role, she said.
“As long as people are still looking for a stablecoin backed by the most risk-free currency, the U.S. dollar will be it,” she said.
However, many groups are only temporarily focusing on digital assets themselves. The audience reflected this, with the crowd mingling and chatting outside the actual room during several panels.
There wouldn’t be a Trump party without the biggest real estate moguls present – and that’s when tokenization (putting assets on the blockchain) becomes a topic. Hospitality billionaire Barry Sternlicht, whose Starwood Capital has more than $125 million in assets under management, said the company is ready to tokenize real-world assets such as real estate but remains unable to do so due to the uncertainty of regularity.
Similarly, Kevin O’Leary told the audience that the sovereign wealth funds he regularly speaks to will not touch cryptocurrencies because they are concerned about the regulatory risks that come with it in the United States
glamor and celebrity
From O’Leary to Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, if the day’s lineup was ranked by celebrity status, organizers would surely have saved the best for last — and probably the least relevant.
Nicki Minaj ended the event as the last panelist, but the first panelist had half the crowd whipping out their phones to take photos. Especially in the financial or crypto space, her presence may not make sense — she said she “could love it” when host Alex Bruesewitz told her people were gathering to discuss a new innovation in finance — but given her recent close relationship with President Donald Trump, it’s not entirely surprising to see her support the family event.
The World Freedom Forum is more than a conference, it is a room where destiny is guided rather than sold, where the asides are as persuasive as the main agenda.
