The ‘Crypto Punks’ Behind Trump’s Murky New Business Venture

Chase Herro is an online salesman who proudly calls himself a “dirtbag of the internet,” able to sell anything to anyone. Zachary Folkman ran a company called Date Hotter Girls, offering advice under a pseudonym on how to pick up women at bars.

For the past decade or so, the two men have been serial entrepreneurs, leaving behind a trail of lawsuits and unpaid debt and taxes.

Now they are former President Donald J. Trump’s business partners.

Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman are the forces behind World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture that Mr. Trump and his three sons announced on a livestream last month. The Republican presidential candidate declared his new enterprise would help turn the United States into “the crypto capital of the world.”

His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman would help engineer a financial revolution based on digital dollars. “You could put them in a boardroom at Goldman Sachs, and they’re going to smoke the people in the room,” he said.

Other crypto experts have expressed doubt, even alarm, about the business, the former president’s involvement and his partners. Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, said Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman did not appear to have the technical or financial savvy to make the venture work.

The concept behind it, which was pitched as groundbreaking, seemed similar to other existing crypto ventures, said John Reed Stark, a former senior official with the Securities and Exchange Commission.