Exclusive: Eric Trump Calls Maldives Hotel First of Many Real Estate Tokenization Projects

World Liberty Financial’s plan to tokenize loan revenue interests tied to the Trump International Hotel & Resort in the Maldives is just the start of a larger plan, World Liberty Financial co-founder Eric Trump said in an exclusive interview with The Defiant.

The project, announced Wednesday, Feb. 18, is being developed with real estate firm DarGlobal and Securitize, a platform known for tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs), including funds like BlackRock’s BUIDL.

Trump told Camila Russo, founder of The Defiant, that tokenization will change real estate finance by making deals simpler and allowing more people to invest who couldn’t before.

“Do we have more plans for this? Yes, certainly, World Liberty has plans to be in the tokenization space of many different asset types, and they’re sprinting toward that,” Trump said. “I believe [DarGlobal CEO Ziad El Chaar] and I will do many more projects, tokenize many more projects, and I think history will look back and say, you know, these were the guys that popped the cork of the champagne bottle.”

The first token sale is designed to give accredited investors a fixed return, a share of income from loans tied to the resort, and the potential for profits upon any future sale. The tokens are expected to be issued on public blockchains and could later be used as collateral on World Liberty Financial’s platform, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant.

“We believe that scalable on-chain real estate products issued with compliance, governance, and market structure in mind will be globally sought after. That’s exactly what this partnership with WLFI is designed to deliver,” said Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize.

The deal highlights a broader trend in crypto of more institutions and firms focusing on tokenization – one of the fastest-growing sectors in the space. As of Thursday, Feb. 19, the distributed asset value of tokenized RWAs has climbed to $24.8 billion, up 11% in the past month, while the number of holders rose more than 30% in the same time frame, according to RWAxyz.

“Everything’s gonna be tokenized,” Trump emphasized. “Commodities are gonna be tokenized, Hollywood can be tokenized, artists are gonna be tokenized, brands, I mean, you can tokenize just about anything.”

The Maldives resort is a flagship hospitality development scheduled to open in 2030. It is expected to include 100 beach and overwater villas, according to the press release.

World Liberty Financial’s native token WLFI is currently trading at around $0.12, down 3.8% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The move follows Wednesday’s rally of 30%, which occurred just ahead of the World Liberty Financial forum held at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Meanwhile, World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin recently surpassed $5.1 billion in circulation, up from roughly $3 billion just weeks ago. It’s now the fifth-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, according to DeFiLlama.