Déjà vu all over again
Let's take a ride through a story about some audit firms that are propping up the fintech firms that prop up some crypto grift.
To recover from our disease of limitlessness, we will have to give up the idea that we have a right to be godlike animals, that we are potentially omniscient and omnipotent, ready to discover ‘the secret of the universe.’ We will have to start over, with a different and much older premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the necessity, of limits. We must learn again to ask how we can make the most of what we are, what we have, what we have been given. Wendell Berry, “Faustian Economics.” Harper’s Magazine (2008).
Back on November 3, the Financial Times’ George Steer (Gift link) wrote about two tiny “banks” — Dominari Holdings and Yorkville Advisors — being used by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump to build their family’s crypto wealth.
How two tiny banks are helping Donald Trump’s sons build a crypto empire Dominari Holdings and Yorkville Advisors are benefiting from close connections with Eric and Donald Trump Jr
The Trump family has tapped two little-known boutique banks to help finance its crypto empire: one based in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, the other sandwiched between a junkyard and a funeral parlour in New Jersey.
Dominari Holdings and Yorkville Advisors have jumped from relative obscurity to the centre of a blizzard of crypto deals the Trumps have struck this year, capitalising on a digital asset boom fuelled by the president’s administration.
Access to the inner circle seems to have helped too.
The FT’s Steer calls these firms “boutique banks”.
Dominari Holdings has been, and is now, a lot of things. A bank is not one of them.
Let’s look at its own admitted origin story. The word “bank” does not appear in its description of its history in its most recent 10-K:
History
Dominari Holdings Inc. (the “Company”), formerly Aikido Pharma, Inc., was founded in 1967 as Spherix Incorporated. Since 2017, the Company operated as a biotechnology company with a diverse portfolio of small-molecule anticancer and antiviral therapeutics and their related patent technology.
The Company is in the process of winding down its historical pipeline of biotechnology assets held by Aikido Labs, LLC. In an effort to enhance shareholder value, in June of 2022, the Company formed a wholly owned financial services subsidiary, Dominari Financial Inc. (“Dominari Financial”), with the intent of shifting the Company’s primary operating focus away from biotechnology to the fintech and financial services industries.
Through Dominari Financial, the Company acquired Dominari Securities LLC (“Dominari Securities”), an introducing broker-dealer, registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) and an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Dominari Securities provides investment advisory services and annuity and insurance products of certain insurance carriers as an insurance agency through independent and affiliated brokers.
The list of things Dominari says it is now doing spans two-and-a-half pages of its 10-K but is summed up in its own words:
Dominari Securities offers, and plans to offer, a broad range of broker-dealer and registered investment adviser services. Those services are discussed below and include wealth management, investment banking, sales and trading, asset management and insurance products.
By the way, that 10-K, for the year ending December 31, 2024, was not filed until April 15, 2025. Dominari — the former Aikido Pharma — has a history of late filings.
After the paywall I’ll say more about why I think this is déjà vu all over again.