Donald Trump Jr. believes crypto to be the future of American dominance, he said in a conversation at the Ondo Summit in New York City on Thursday.

"I think it's perhaps the future of American hegemony, in terms of our economic status, our economic might," Trump Jr. said.

The son of the U.S. president made a surprise appearance at the event after World Liberty Financial (WLF), the crypto project backed by the Trump family, bought Ondo's native cryptocurrency (ONDO) earlier today.

"We do have to create that framework in which [crypto], which I believe to be the future of finance, where we can play, where there is an understanding of what that is but also where it's not so over-regulated by people who don't know what they're talking about that you lose everything that it stands for," Trump Jr. said.

Chase Herro, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, also said that the protocol will soon launch a "strategic reserve" of crypto assets. "We are big builder fans."

WLF made headlines over the past months investing in multiple tokens including ETH, wrapped BTC, Tron's TRX, AAVE, Chainlink's LINK among other. World Liberty Financial acquired about $470,000 worth of ONDO tokens today soon after Ondo Finance announced plans to launch Ondo Chain, a layer-1 blockchain designed for tokenized assets.

During U.S. morning hours, Trump's social media company revealed that it was looking to launch a series of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), one of them which would track the price of bitcoin (BTC) called the Truth.Fi Bitcoin Plus ETF.