The debut token sale for the Trump family’s crypto project World Liberty Financial has so far fallen flat, with the number of tokens sold reaching just over 3.4% of its $300 million goal as its website crashed.
The sale for WLFI, the platform’s token, went live on Oct. 15 with 20 billion tokens priced at 1.5 cents apiece available to the public — but 14 hours later, only 687 million, about $10.3 million worth, had been sold.
Etherscan data shows just 6,832 unique wallet addresses hold WLFI, far below the over 100,000 signups the project’s team touted they’d seen a day before the token’s launch.
World Liberty Financial’s website shows its WLFI token is far under the $300 million goal it set for public sale. Source: World Liberty Financial
World Liberty Financial’s website crashed soon after the tokens went on sale and was unavailable for several hours, apparently due to excessive traffic. Some observers were met with a “website under maintenance” notice when trying to access the site.
According to the project’s white paper released Oct. 15 — which it calls a “gold paper” — WLFI’s total supply will be 100 billion tokens, 35% of which will be distributed in token sales to eligible participants.
Former President Donald Trump’s sons, Barron, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are listed as the platform’s “Web3 Ambassadors.”
Trump, the current Republican presidential candidate — named the platform’s “Chief Crypto Advocate” in the white paper — took to X on Oct. 15 to tout the token sale.
“Crypto is the future, let’s embrace this incredible technology and lead the world in the digital economy,” he said in a video.
Today’s the day! @WorldLibertyFi token sale is live. Get your $WLFI tokens now. Purchase $WLFI here: https://t.co/jg1tOaHHBy pic.twitter.com/j8ewxa13wp
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 15, 2024
In the United States, the tokens and platform are only available to accredited investors — those with Securities and Exchange Commission approval to invest in unregistered securities as they typically earn more than $200,000 a year and have over $1 million in assets.
The WLFI tokens will not be tradable but will serve as a governance token for a soon-to-be-launched Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform.
Related: Trump crypto project proposes Aave link in governance proposal
World Liberty Financial plans to run as an instance of the popular DeFi protocol Aave, according to a governance proposal it submitted to the protocol earlier this month.
Of the remaining WLFI tokens not set aside for the public, 32.5% will be allocated to community growth and incentives, 30% will be for “initial supporter allocation,” and 2.5% will be allocated to the team and advisers.
In an X Spaces event on Oct. 14, the platform’s head of operations, Zak Folkman, reiterated information about the project, confirming that the platform will allow users to borrow and lend crypto, create and interact with liquidity pools, and transact with stablecoins.
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