# Zak Folkman Co-founder of [[World Liberty Financial]] alongside [[Chase Herro]] and the Witkoff family. Folkman's pre-crypto background is as a pickup-artist / dating-seminar entrepreneur, making him one of the more unusual figures to end up running a DeFi protocol seeking a federal bank charter. ## Background - Previously ran **Date Hotter Girls LLC** — a dating-advice / pickup-artist seminar business with [[YouTube]] presence. - Longtime business partner of [[Chase Herro]] — the two ran "mastermind" groups and a crypto-trading YouTube channel together before WLFI. - Crypto background is promotional/retail-facing rather than technical or institutional. ## Role in World Liberty Financial - **Co-founder** (2024) with Chase Herro, Alex Witkoff, [[Zach Witkoff]], and Trump family members. - **Control shift:** January 2025 restructuring moved 60% control to Trump family via WLF Holdco LLC; Folkman retained operator role. - **Extraction:** Reporting indicates Folkman and Herro together extracted **$65M+** from initial WLFI token sales. ## Connection to the $TRUMP Memecoin No direct operational role in the $TRUMP Solana token. Connection is structural (same Trump-family crypto umbrella) and personnel-based (WLFI whales like [[Justin Sun]] overlap with $TRUMP whales). ## Why He Matters Folkman's trajectory — dating-seminar YouTuber to co-founder of a DeFi protocol applying for a federally regulated bank charter — is a compressed version of the entire Trump-era crypto regulatory arbitrage. Under prior SEC/OCC posture, a bank charter applicant with Folkman's background would not have survived initial intake. Under the 2025–2026 regulatory posture, the application is live. ## See Also - [[$TRUMP Memecoin Universe]] - [[World Liberty Financial]] - [[Chase Herro]] - [[Zach Witkoff]]