A new crypto project promoted by U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his family got off to a bumpy start on Tuesday, as the website crashed and sales of a new digital token fell far short of the $300 million fundraising target during the first few hours. The public token sale for the crypto project, World Liberty Financial, appeared to go live around 12:40 UTC (8:40 a.m. ET), and almost 2,900 investors bought the token despite the site suffering numerous outages during its first hour.
Trump is described in materials for the project as World Liberty Financial’s “chief crypto advocate.” His three sons, Eric, Barron, and Donald Jr. are listed as “Web3 ambassadors.” Some 20 billion tokens were allocated to the public sale, offered at a fixed price of $0.015, or 1.5 cents each, amounting to a total fundraising goal of $300 million. The overall supply of the tokens, including those not available through the public sale, is 100 billion.
The WLFI token sale is restricted exclusively to non-U.S. persons and accredited U.S. investors. Top officials behind World Liberty Financial disclosed Monday that the project had whitelisted over 100,000 accredited U.S. investors ahead of the token launch. The U.S. restrictions are designed to protect WLF from violating U.S. securities regulations.
In the U.S., an accredited investor is authorized by the Securities and Exchange Commission to invest in unregistered securities such as pre-IPO shares. They must meet specific income and net worth criteria, such as $200,000 in annual earnings and total assets over $1 million.
A “gold paper” about the token released Tuesday morning shed more details on WLFI, including its distribution and exact role in the platform. World Liberty Financial is described as a unified platform where users can borrow and lend cryptocurrencies, create liquidity pools and transact with stablecoins. The token will allow holders to propose future changes to the platform.
However, all $WLFI will be non-transferable – meaning they will be locked indefinitely in a wallet, or “smart contract,” and impossible to trade unless the rules are modified in the future. All governance decisions will be in line with U.S. regulations to ensure any changes are complaint with laws, according to the WLF team.
“WLF strongly believes in supporting US dollar-based stablecoins and DeFi applications that seek to preserve the US Dollar’s status, ensuring it remains the global reserve currency for the next century—without compromising the freedoms that decentralized assets provide,” an excerpt from the gold paper reads. “A key part of our mission at World Liberty Financial is to leverage the global reach and recognition of the Trump brand to bring as many Web2 users into the world of Web3 as possible,” it added.
