Trump-backed World Liberty token sinks to new all-time low amid governance proposal to unlock 62 billion tokens
The top 22 addresses voting in favor control 4.8 billion tokens, making up the majority of “yes” votes.
WLFI, the cryptocurrency that aims to provide governance rights of President Trump-backed World Liberty Financial to holders, continues to set new all-time lows, with the token dropping 8% in the last 24 hours.
An ongoing governance proposal to unlock 62 billion tokens is weighing on the price:
Of the 45 billion locked tokens of founders, team members, advisers, and partners, 10% would be burned, while the remaining would follow a five-year schedule after a two-year cliff, if passed.
The proposal would also make 17 billion locked tokens of early supporters subject to a two-year cliff followed by a two-year linear vest, which means tokens start to unlock at year 2 and will be fully distributed by year 4, according to the voting portal.
The voting period ends on May 6, has already reached a quorum of 1 billion tokens, and has near unanimous support, with 99.9% voting in support of it, albeit the vote is largely concentrated. The top 22 voters in favor of the proposal command nearly 4.8 billion tokens, more than enough on-chain power to sway the vote’s result.
Similar to vesting schedules of a traditional firm’s shares, token unlocks refer to the gradual release of cryptocurrencies with the goal of preventing en masse selling during the early stages of a project. Unlocks are typically a bearish sign given the increase in the token’s supply on the open market.
Justin Sun, who has invested $75 million in World Liberty but cannot vote on the proposal, as the World Liberty team has frozen his WLFI tokens, strongly opposes the plan, saying it is bad for the community. Sun has since filed a lawsuit in a California federal court against the Trump-backed crypto project.
The governance proposal comes in the same month World Liberty was under fire for borrowing $75 million in USDC by leveraging $5 billion worth of WLFI as collateral. Some in the crypto industry have expressed skepticism whether the team will repay its on-chain debt.
Currently, 62 billion WLFI tokens are worth roughly $3.7 billion, but that figure may overstate its realized value in practice: selling that amount on decentralized exchange Uniswap in a single order would return only about $2.7 million, based on estimates from the protocol’s web interface.
Meanwhile, liquidity on centralized exchanges may also be too thin to absorb an order of that size without sharp price disruption. On Binance, market depth — measured by buy and sell orders within 2% of the current price — is roughly $300,000 and $325,000, suggesting an order in that range could move the token about 2%, data from CoinGecko shows.
WLFI is down 82% from its all-time high of $0.33 set in September.
