Transcription
I would make the distinction that if he is a libertarian, he's a cartel market libertarian as opposed to a free market libertarian. Peter Teal does not like free markets, he does not like free market competition. He says competition is bad for profits and that you should corner uh a market and create a monopoly. And when he's done that and made monopolies, he's done it in conjunction with three-letter agencies in the US government. So this is not something that someone, you know, a libertarian quote unquote does. I mean, he says, "Why shouldn't libertarians work with the government and enlarge the government and all of this?" I mean, it honestly just makes um very little sense.
>> The Wall Street Journal reported this week that World Liberty Financial, [music] the Trump family's crypto venture that generated $540 million for Trump affiliated entities, is now in talks to sell the only part of its business that [music] actually generates revenue for $15 million. The company it promoted as a cornerstone of an international payments network has warned investors about its ability to continue as a going concern. Its stock is down more than 90%. Investors who bought in based on the Trump family connection absorbed hundreds of millions in losses while the Trump family collected its 75% of token sale proceeds regardless of what happened to the token's [music] price.
Whitney Webb told Natalie Brunell exactly how this model works and why it has nothing to do with free markets. Here is what she said before the interview. Here is the specific framework Webb laid out that explains the world liberty structure. Webb distinguishes between [music] free market capitalism and what she calls cartel market capitalism. In a free market, competition determines winners. In the cartel model, you corner the market by building monopolies. You do it in conjunction with government access and intelligence [music] agency relationships and you use that position to extract maximum value from the system while outside participants absorb the risk. She applies this framework specifically to Peter Theal who has said publicly that competition is for losers [music] and that companies should corner markets and who built those monopolies explicitly in conjunction with the CIA and government agencies.
The same structure runs through the World Liberty Transaction. The Trump family's [music] 75% of proceeds was contractually guaranteed regardless of what happened to the token price. Outside investors put in $1.5 billion. The WLFI token fell 70%. AI Financial Corp. now has a going concern warning and a stock that has lost 93% of its value. The Trump family has over half a billion. This is not a market failure. It is the cartel model working exactly as designed.
A payments company once touted as a cornerstone of the Trump family's [music] cryptocurrency ambitions is preparing to sell the only part of its business that generates [music] revenue. AI Financial has disclosed a $271 million quarterly loss tied largely to the decline in its WLFI holdings and previously warned investors about its ability to continue [music] as a going concern. AI Financials stock has fallen more than 90% since [music] the World Liberty transaction. One of the few parties who benefited from the alt 5 sigma transaction [music] is the Trump family. The president and undisclosed members of his family were entitled to roughly $500 million in proceeds from the crypto sale.
White House [music] spokeswoman Anna Kelly responding to the story. Trump's assets are held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third party financial institutions [music] and there are no conflicts of interest. World Liberty Financial structured [music] its token deal so that the Trump family received 75% of all WLFI sales proceeds. When AI Financial Corp, then called Alt 5 Sigma, bought $1.5 billion worth of WLFI tokens [music] in August 2025, the Trump family was entitled to around $540 million from that transaction alone. Since then, [music] WLFI fell roughly 70%. AI Financial has lost 93% of its stock [music] value. It has warned investors it may not be able to continue as a going concern. It is now trying to sell its only profitable subsidiary for $15 million upfront. No USD1 stable coin transactions [music] have ever been processed through the payments platform World Liberty promoted as central to its strategy.
This video covers Web's documented explanation of how cartel market capitalism works, why competition is described by people like Peter Theel [music] as being for losers, and why the world liberty structure is a textbook example of extracting value from a system while leaving outside [music] participants to absorb all the downside.
>> Oh, there's so much to say about Peter T. Well, so um yeah, so what you referenced earlier that like speech at the Bitcoin conference a few years ago, um not only was he selling at the top, but also like right after that he went on a panel with like then CIA director Mike Pompeo and was like Bitcoin's probably a financial weapon from China to threaten the dollar. I mean, Peter Teal is one of those guys that just um I think his p his public facing remarks are intentionally confusing. That way, people can sort of point to, you know, specific quotes and say, "Oh, he's this. Oh, he's that." He's sort of like a public chameleon, I feel [music] like, in that sense. And a lot of people seem to think that Peter Teal is a libertarian. Uh because he has described himself as that. Uh but I mean if you actually listen to a lot of the stuff he said and also look at the things he's done um he doesn't seem like a libertarian at all.
Um well you know I would make the distinction that if he is a libertarian he's a cartel market libertarian as opposed to a free market libertarian. Peter Thiel um does not like free markets. He does not like free market competition. He says competition is bad for profits and that you should corner uh a market and create a monopoly. And when he's done that and made monopolies, he's done it in conjunction with three-letter agencies in the US government. So, this is not something that someone, you know, a libertarian quote unquote does. I mean, he says, "Why shouldn't libertarians work with the government and enlarge the government and all of this?" I mean, it honestly just makes um very little sense, frankly.
>> So, I think again it's, you know, using a word, using an identity, using a label to get people to identify with him, being like, "Oh, yeah, he's our guy. He's the libertarian billionaire in Silicon Valley and all of this. Um yeah, but if you look at how he built PayPal, PayPal, um >> the co-founders, which you know include Peter Teal and Max Levchin and others, um have been pretty open that at their as they were creating their business, they did so in consultation with pretty much every [music] intelligence agency that would talk to them. And then PayPal of course has been partnered with intelligence on and off in ways that are pretty significant as it relates to financial surveillance. and PayPal has also well of course Peter Teal hasn't been involved with it with since the in you know since the early 2000s or so. Uh but then he went on to create Palunteer which he did so explicitly with the involvement of the CIA. Um it's first for the first several years of its existence. Palanteer's only client was the CIA. The CIA was their first main funer alongside Teal himself. And it was really uh the resurrection, deliberate resurrection uh by Teal and and Alex Karp of a failed DARPA public private surveillance [music] program called Total Information Awareness. And they went to the people that were running Total Information Awareness after it was shut down by Congress [music] and basically tried to pick their brains about how to make a private only version of this public private partnership that was criticized by everyone even in mainstream media and pretty much every you know advocacy organization in the United States said this will eliminate uh privacy for every American and it's blatantly unconstitutional and so they just recreated it um as [music] a private sector entity and now Palanteer doesn't just, you know, do that um for the US government, they do it for Wall Street as well. And there's been quotes to the effect [music] that Palunteer doesn't just run the intelligence community. Um they also run Wall Street u because you know their AI and predictive analytics and all of that are are used by some of the biggest firms in Wall Street and they're also used by uh every single intelligence agency in the United States. So, if you're a libertarian that wants wants to make government smaller [music] and reduce the excesses and abuses um of a government that's gotten out of control, why would you give the most outofc control part of the government, the CIA, uh the [music] most powerful and damaging to freedom weapon in its entire arsenal? Uh that's been used to profile Americans for the past 20 years based off of, you know, all of the data we freely put online.
What you just heard is Webb explaining [music] that Peter Theel is not a libertarian in any meaningful sense. That he built PayPal in consultation with intelligence agencies. That Palanteer was built explicitly with CIA funding and the CIA as its intended client. That Clear View AI scraped faces off Facebook to build a law enforcement facial recognition database. And that JD Vance is essentially a Theelmade man whose entire political and venture capital career theel funded.
What comes next is web on how this same cartel model operates in the broader crypto and financial space. Why both parties are bankrolled by the same Silicon Valley oligarchs who agree on surveillance and programmable money despite funding different candidates. And why the World Liberty story is not a unique corruption case, but a standard expression of how these networks operate.
>> You know, something like Palunteer is a really good example of how how bipartisan that is. every administration that's in office, whether it's Democrat or Republican, gives them more and more and more and more and more contracts, >> you know, and a lot of these other companies that are sort of in the universe of Palunteer like Anderil and Clear View AI, the same is true there as well. So, um, you know, again, these are policies that are going to, uh, expand regardless of who's in power. Maybe you could debate about maybe it will advance slower with one party than the other. Uh but ultimately, you know, it's the same agenda. And a lot of that goes back to the fact that they're bankrolled uh both parties by, you know, differing factions, I guess, of Silicon Valley oligarchs. But those guys agree about uh widespread financial surveillance and, you know, programmable money and biometric digital ID, which are sort of the foundation for a lot of the stuff and the sustainable development goals, which is really, you know, was written by bankers and isn't really about sustainable development. It's about something else. um and sort of this effort for like a a you know [music] really a technocratic global government. Um you know it it all of that rests on having digital ID and a surveill you know a digital wallet tied to it. Um and a lot of people in the tealverse I guess like Sam Alman you know his world coin is meant to be that it's meant to [music] be you know both a wallet and a you know provider of biometric digital ID. Um, and the the United Nations, for example, has been beta testing that exact system for years on the most vulnerable people in the world on refugees through things like the building box program [music] of the World Food Program where refugees have to scan their eyeball and make a digital ID and have a digital wallet and they can go in and get their, you know, rations. Uh, but only if they scan their eyeball, they have to pay with their face, otherwise they don't eat. um you know they've been testing this on the most vulnerable people on the world but it's a system that's intended for everybody ultimately. [music] So I think if we want to stop this it's not about you know maybe you can vote for the party you think will implement it more slowly right but that's that's not going to defeat the policy [music] what will defeat the policy is people opting out.
>> Yeah. So, um, if you think about, you know, what happened with COVID, like vaccine passports, sort of as a trial run for digital ID, um, how did you avoid working with vaccine passports? Well, you had to opt out. It was kind of inconvenient. You weren't allowed to go places or do things that other people with them could do. And the same is going to be true with digital ID. So, we had that test run with COVID. If you want to oppose digital ID and not participate in that system and opt out, which if you care about really human freedom, you should, then you should think about what you will do to opt out and not >> yeah interact with those systems. [music] And if you don't want to use programmable surveillable money, whether it's from the private sector [music] or the public sector, you should think about what you will do to avoid interacting with such money and having your income surveiled. [music] Um, and exactly how much you think is safe for you to interact with that system. But I would argue the safest is to not interact with it at all. But obviously everyone's different and there were some people during co that had to, you know, do vaccine [music] mandates or they would lose their jobs, their kids couldn't eat, whatever. I get that. But we've had, >> you know, a [music] few years since then and this is going to happen again. They're going to try and do this again. It may not be under the guise of a pandemic. It might be something else, but it's or cyber crime, whatever. But they're going to try and impose this some way. And we need to think about how to resist the policy. we should focus on the policies we don't like and think about collectively how are we going to stop those policies um or opt out of those policies to [music] the greatest extent we can instead of you know voting for whichever team supports those policies but maybe less so than the other guy you know I think that's a a losing strategy
>> Liberty Financial's only revenue generating business is being sold for $15 million the company it used to acquire that business has lost 93% of its >> [music] >> Investors have absorbed hundreds of millions in losses. The Trump family has over [music] $540 million from the same transaction. The White House says no conflicts of interest. Web said in this interview that Peter Teal does not believe in free market competition, that he says competition is for losers, that you should corner markets with government help, and that this is the cartel model that both parties oligarch backers agree on regardless of who wins any election. The World Liberty Fire sale is the cartel model with the accounting visible. Read the full WSJ, Fortune, and CNBC coverage linked below. Subscribe and we will keep tracking this as the going concern situation at AI Financial Corp. develops. [music] [music] [music] [music] Heat [music]