The Trump family business and its Saudi-based development partner, Dar Al Arkan, have a new project that draws on two of the family’s most successful money-making businesses: cryptocurrency trading and real estate development.
The couple on Monday announced the latest real estate deal that the Trump Organization would license its name to: a luxury hotel in the Maldives with a new financing structure that allows a broader group of investors to buy into the deal.
Unlike other Trump-branded projects the partners have in the works, the new venture will involve “property tokenization,” allowing investors to buy fractional interests in the property via digital tokens that can be bought and sold on a blockchain platform.
The deal was announced just as President Trump prepares to host Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, in Washington this week.
Since Mr. Trump returned to office, his family and associated companies have trumpeted new ventures abroad involving billions of dollars. Cryptocurrency has proven to be particularly lucrative.
In the case of the hotel project, selling digital tokens could allow developers to take on less traditional debt, in the form of bank loans, to finance construction. At least that’s the plan if there are enough cryptocurrency enthusiasts willing to buy into the Trump family’s latest project.
The model could make it much more difficult to trace the identity of investors in the project, opening up even more opportunities for foreign players to try to help enrich the Trump family and its business partners.
The Trump family’s partner in the project is Dubai-based Dar Global, which is majority-owned by Dar Al Arkan, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest private property developers.
In the Maldives, Dar Global plans to build 80 of what it calls “ultra luxury villas,” which will sit on the ocean and be reached by a 25-minute speedboat ride from Malé, the capital of the Indian Ocean island nation.
“This development will not only redefine luxury in the region, but also set a new benchmark for real estate investment innovation through tokenization,” Eric Trump, the president’s son, said in a statement issued Monday announcing the plan.
The Maldives project is one of at least eight Trump Organization projects with Dar Global, with the others planned in Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Separately, the Trump Organization has also explored a Saudi Arabian government real estate deal to form another partnership for the pair, The New York Times reported this month.
As the Trump Organization’s key overseas partner, Dar Global has leveraged this partnership to expand around the world. This year, the company opened its first office in the United States, in Trump Tower in New York.
Neither the Trump Organization nor Dar Global responded to a request for additional details on the Maldives project.
In most of these deals, the Trump family lends its name to the project and is paid a multimillion-dollar fee along with a cut of the money the developers make from sales related to the project. The Trump family company generally does not invest its own money in building the project, instead effectively selling its brand to help drive up the prices of the units.
President Trump’s latest financial disclosure form showed more than $20 million in payments linked to Dar Al Arkan deals last year alone.
In the fall, Eric Trump talked about the concept of digital tokens, celebrating its minimization of banks, as well as the opportunity it could offer Trump supporters globally.
“We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds — and probably billions — of people who love our family around the world and love what we stand for as a brand,” the president’s son said in an interview with crypto news site CoinDesk last month. He added that the brand’s appeal to supporters was “in terms of maybe being outspokenly political, in terms of the kind of luxury, and the kind that we’ve built, and the politically correct fight that we’ve built, and the fight that we have, often on the front side of these curves.”
“So many people would love to have a piece of something that we do,” he said.
