World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a cryptocurrency firm linked to the family of U.S. President Donald Trump, created quite the buzz when they launched around the same time as the presidential elections. Critics speculate that WLFI has ulterior motives to exploit key crypto events like the White House Crypto Summit, using President Trump’s conflicting interests in his financial portfolio as a means for leverage. With these speculations aside, WLFI has proven to be politically affected by the decrease in crypto and stock prices during the Trump Administration’s first 100 days in office due to the macroeconomic concerns, effectively losing those crypto-related links. Regardless, WLFI faces the same fate as every other cryptocurrency firm, reeling from the market downturn. Just like every other crypto-linked business, WLFI is facing the performance drop from the current economic struggle.
Project Founding & Team
On September 16, WLFI was launched, and the then president-elect of the US, Donald Trump, declared the development on the platform X. The firm’s co-founders include Witkoff Associates LLC’s real estate mogul, Steve Witkoff, and his son, Zach Witkoff. Other co-founders are Chase Herro, self-described as a “dirtbag of the internet” and crypto investor, and Zak Folkman, who is known for social media and previously for pickup artistry. The Trump family is also very publicly involved on the leadership side of the project. Donald Trump is named under the position “chief crypto advocate,” while Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron are designated as “Web3 ambassadors” for the project. In the project’s “gold paper” documents, Trump’s imagery has been praised in the text.
Token Sales Strategy
One of the first major undertakings of World Liberty Financial included selling its own native token, $WLFI. The company’s first sale began on October 15, 2024. The company reported revenues of around $300 million from the sale of 20 billion $WLFI tokens at a price of $0.015 each. On January 20, 2025, the WLFI announced the $WLFI second token sale on the day President Trump was inaugurated, citing “massive demand and overwhelming interest.” It offered 5 billion tokens at a price of $0.05 each, which was an astonishing 230% increase from the reserve price of the first sale. The second sale was achieved nearly two months later on March 14, exceeding the target of $250 million. In total, WLFI accumulated $550 million through these sales. As stated in the ‘gold paper’ of the project, these tokens are designed to provide holders the voting power on crucial decisions regarding system-level changes such as upgrades.
The expected distribution will allocate 35% through sales, 32.5% to incentivize and grow the community, 30% for “initial supporter” allocation, and 2.5% to “core team and advisers.” Interestingly, $WLFI was exclusively offered to accredited investors. By its terms and conditions, $WLFI cannot yet change hands or be traded on exchanges, and no officially set listing date has been announced.
Performance Overview
Aside from their token sales, WLFI has begun operating as a sort of crypto fund, accumulating various tokens over the past months. Arkham estimates that the firm’s portfolio comprises many assets, out of which 13 dominate the portfolio, constituting about $100 million of WLFI’s total $103 million portfolio as of now. The rest is made up of several other smaller coins, some of which have a total value of less than $100,000. The largest stock holdings are mainly in USDC, which is a dollar-pegged stablecoin, followed by Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and Ether (ETH). WLFI’s portfolio also holds $5 million worth of aethUSDC, which means that the portfolio provided liquidity in the form of USDC to a pool on Aave. From the eight non-stablecoin assets, WLFI directly holds WBTC, Mantle (MNT), Movement (MOVE), Sei (SEI), Avalanche (AVAX), Tron (TRX), Ondo (ONDO), and Ether (ETH). In total, the firm’s holdings of WBTC, SEI, and AVAX are said to be performing the best. The AVAX position was established in a single purchase on March 15. The firm purchased around $6 million worth of SEI across three transactions in February, March, and April. However, other positions have been struggling.
As of April 24, significant stakes in MNT, MOVE, ONDO, and ETH were said to be losing value in the tens of percent range. In particular, MOVE is doing very poorly; WLFI’s reported total investment value in the asset has dropped by over 50%, meaning the fund lost approximately $2,100,000 on that investment alone. According to estimates, taking into consideration the average purchase price of WLFI’s token holdings and their market prices, the fund’s overall loss is roughly $4,280,000 on average.
Conflicts and Stablecoin
The project has come under fire due to what appears to be a potential intersecting interest. The WLFI, for example, moving tokens to the exchange at the same time Eric Trump is shilling Ether creates some level of suspicion of whether the Trump family is able to control or influence the tokens they own. In March, senators urged regulators to think about the more specific conflicts of interest with WLFI, focused around its stablecoin USD1. USD1 was released in early March and is available on Kinesis Money and ChangeNOW for trading. Senators are fearing President Trump has the ability to control, subsidize, and grant benefits to USD1 users solely because of midterm Trump’s stablecoin legislation; tethering stablecoin to Trump would dominate the market. Further, after the markets collapsed because of Trump’s tariff announcement, he issued a Truth Social post that read, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!” which escalated questions around undercover trading and market manipulation with regard to his arguments and investments.
Admin Ties & Industry
Trump’s administration’s connections with the cryptocurrency industry seem to be getting stronger, with his aides dropping high-profile enforcement cases against crypto firms, suggesting that the allied members of Congress are drafting friendly bills towards the industry. Furthermore, some crypto firms support the WLFI project and on April 16th, the crypto market maker, DWF Labs, announced a $25 million investment along with providing liquidity for the USD1 stablecoin. This public investment conveys that regardless of political scrutiny, some crypto industry players perceive potential in the Trump-linked initiative.
