Eric Trump: Crypto is going to leave big banks with regret and ‘in the dust’

Big banks are going to regret going after crypto individuals and political individuals, according to Eric Trump, Executive VC at The Trump Organization and the son of U.S. President Donald Trump.

"Our system is broken. Modern finance is absolutely broken," said Eric Trump, in a fireside chat with World Liberty Financial Co-Founder Zach Witkoff and Tron Founder Justin Sun at Token2049 in Dubai. He pointed to the way big banks went after the Trump family over the previous few years and said that crypto is going to make the banks regret that move.

"I believe the crypto world is going to take over the big banks," he said. "I think it’s going to leave them in the dust."

Eric Trump said it's hard for banks to innovate as their business model depends on charging fees, which they might struggle to charge in a crypto environment. He repeated his position that if banks don't innovate, they will become redundant.

"They’re just going to be extinct because you’re eliminating their function. It’s like old school film and camera. I think that’s what’s going to happen to financial institutions," he said, adding that crypto is innovating 100 times faster than the big banks. "Nothing would make me so happy to see them fall to the very people they came after."

Eric Trump said that many people don't have financial freedom and argued that anyone with a phone can access finance through crypto.

"Crypto brings an even-playing field to the world," he said. "You’re no longer at the mercy of a government or currency you may no longer trust."

Eric Trump also spoke well about the UAE and its willingness to work on projects, yet he criticized Europe for not being open to business. "America is 1,000% times better than Europe," he said.

Eric Trump's foray into crypto

Eric Trump is a Web3 Ambassador at World Liberty alongside two of his brothers. Donald Trump is the project's Chief Crypto Advocate, according to its website.

In November, Sun said that Tron had made a $30 million purchase of World Liberty's WLFI tokens. The next day he became an advisor to the project.

According to the New York Times, such deals made with World Liberty are two-way transactions. World Liberty offers to buy a smaller amount of an external project's token in exchange for the project purchasing $10 million to $30 million of its WLFI tokens — and it keeps the difference.

The reflexivity of these deals is not usually announced by token projects, but can be seen onchain; in January, World Liberty purchased $5 million of Tron's token TRX, with that amount later rising to around $10 million.