Trump Family’s World Liberty Financial Announces Token Sale

On Sept. 16, World Liberty Financial, the upcoming DeFi project from the family of the former U.S. president Donald Trump, confirmed plans to conduct a token sale.

During an X live-stream hosted by Rug Radio co-founder Farokh Sarmad that drew an audience of 648,000, Zak Folkman, operations lead at World Liberty Financial, revealed that WLFI will comprise a governance token.

"There will be a token," Folkman said. "WLFI tokens are pure governance tokens, only providing the right to make proposals and vote on matters related to the platform.”

Folkman, reading from a prepared statement, said that WLFI tokens would be non-transferable and would not grant any economic benefits such as dividends to holders.

"We only want eligible people who actually plan to engage in the direction of World Liberty Financial governance to purchase the token," Folkman added.

The sale will distribute nearly 63% of WLFI’s supply to accredited investors in the U.S., while 17% is reserved for user rewards, and 20% is earmarked 20% for World Liberty Financial’s team and advisors. Folkman emphasized that there haven't been any pre-sales to investors.

Folkman noted that the sale would be restricted to accredited investors due to regulatory considerations.

"Although we don’t consider WLFI to be a security, in light of regulatory uncertainty surrounding tokens and token sales in the United States, we’ve decided it’s prudent to limit the token sales to certain persons who would be eligible to participate in transactions that are exempt from registration under the U.S. federal securities law," Folkman said.

Eric Trump said World Liberty Financial aims to make DeFi easier for “regular people” to use, despite those same users being unable to participate in the token sale.

Although details regarding the World Liberty Financial platform remain hazy, on Sept. 3, the project revealed it is working with Aave, the largest DeFi money market protocol. The project also emphasized its commitment to promoting U.S.-based stablecoins — suggesting the platform will comprise a stablecoin-focused lending protocol.

Trump says the U.S. must embrace crypto

While Donald Trump attended the call, the Republican presidential nominee avoided discussing specifics relating to the token sale or platform. Instead, he spoke in broad strokes regarding the potential of cryptocurrency.

"Crypto is one of those things we have to do, whether we like it or not,” he said.

Trump also reiterated his belief that the U.S. risks falling behind rival nations should it fail to promote web3 innovation.

"If we don't do it, China is going to do it,” Trump said.

Donald Trump's newfound crypto embrace marks a significant shift from just a few years ago.

In 2021, Trump described Bitcoin as a “scam" and the broader cryptocurrency industry as a “disaster waiting to happen.”

However, Trump has released four collections of NFT trading cards since December 2022 and began aggressively courting votes from the crypto sector earlier this year, including advocating for the U.S. Bitcoin mining industry to lead the global sector.

Trump Jr. says his family was debanked

Trump’s sons described decentralized finance as aligning with America's founding principles and expressed concern about traditional banking systems. Trump Jr. drew upon his family's purported experience of being "debanked.”

"We could have picked up the phone and called any CEO of any bank and gotten a loan," Trump Jr. said. "Then we got into the political arena and like that, it was turned off."

He described an incident involving PNC Bank, where one of his businesses was suddenly cut off without explanation. "It wasn't that we didn't have incredible balance sheets... They broke up with us by mail," Trump Jr. continued.