Trump-linked World Liberty Financial punts its launch as crypto second-guesses the DeFi project
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Ready, set… oh. The debut for a crypto project hyped by former Prez Donald Trump and his sons came and went on Monday without an actual kickoff. Over the course of a two-hour X Spaces conference that Trump said would “launch” World Liberty Financial, few details were shared about the reported decentralized-finance project (meantime, listeners dropped off). While WLF didn’t launch, some more details were shared:
Token offering: The WLF crypto “governance token” (which would let users vote on how the project is run) was said to be nontransferable and wouldn’t earn yield. The WLF team would get 20% of the supply, with 63% set aside for big-fish investors.
Stable genius: The Spaces speakers — which included Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and two project insiders — leaned into the value of stablecoins. It’s unclear how or if WLF involves stables.
On second thought… World Liberty Financial’s bumpy rollout — which included the apparent hack of Lara and Tiffany Trump’s X accounts — has had mixed reactions from crypto insiders. One prominent crypto VC called it a “huge mistake” that seemed like a cash grab. Now analysts say the project’s ties to Trump could backfire for the industry by alienating Democratic lawmakers just as they’ve started warming to crypto. Trump’s charging ahead: “Crypto is one of those things we have to do,” he said on the stream. “Whether we like it or not, I have to do it.”
Fresh fans can flip quickly… because their loyalty isn’t sticky. Trump had found support in the crypto community after his public embrace of bitcoin over the summer (he’d previously called it a “scam”). Now, as the US presidential election nears, he risks losing some of that support should WLF fail or be perceived as sketchy.