Donald Trump’s WLFI token to be limited to accredited investors

Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial has confirmed plans to launch a governance token that will be available only to accredited investors.

Former President Donald Trump, who survived a second assassination attempt, made his first public appearance on September 17 in an interview with cryptocurrency influencer Farokh Sarmad at X Spaces, where the World Liberty Financial team introduced the WLFI token to an audience of more than 100,000.

The WLFI token will be sold under a Regulation D exemption that allows companies to raise money without registering with the SEC, provided they stick to accredited investors or small, private sales.

Zak Folkman, one of the project’s founders, said the decision stemmed from regulatory uncertainty surrounding token sales in the US, where the Securities and Exchange Commission generally considers these tokens to be securities.

Sales to U.S. residents will require verification as an accredited investor, while non-U.S. buyers may face other restrictions, although it remains unclear how they will participate.

WLFI will be non-transferable “pure governance tokens” that give holders the ability to propose and vote on platform-related issues, and promises to “leave slow and outdated banks behind.”

Approximately 63% of the total token supply is reserved for the public sale, 17% is reserved for user rewards, and 20% is reserved for the team and advisors. While Folkman did not disclose the token’s total supply, he did say that the distribution will be “incredibly fair” and that there will be no pre-sales or early purchases with discounted allocations for venture capitalists.

The launch date of the token has not been announced yet.

Trump silent on WLFI

Trump, who has previously brought up the project several times, has avoided discussing the issue directly and instead focused on broader issues such as cryptocurrency policy and the potential of digital assets in the U.S. economy.

“Crypto is one of those things that we have to do, whether we like it or not,” he said during his time as speaker, adding that the industry was “big but relatively new compared to what it will be in the future.”

Other members of the Trump family have also joined the discussion, with Donald Trump Jr. stating that he sees DeFi as a way to “bring fairness to the financial system” and that he believes it is “what our founding fathers intended.”

Eric Trump shared his own struggles with decentralized platforms like Aave, saying DeFi needs to be much more user-friendly.

Concerns continue

As previously reported by crypto.news , there were initially concerns that 70% of all WLFI tokens would be reserved for insiders, including Trump. However, with that number now clarified to 20%, those concerns have somewhat subsided, although there are still some doubts regarding the security of the project, particularly the involvement of one of its leaders, Chase Herro.

His latest venture, Dough Financial, a lending platform similar to Aave, JustLend, and Spark, reached $3.2 million in assets before an exploit drained more than $2 million. Now, Dough is virtually dormant, with just $9,747 of total value locked in, according to Defilama.

To address security concerns, the WLFI team has enlisted top-tier security firms like PeckShield, Zokyo, and BlockSecTeam to audit and protect the platform. The team also revealed that the project’s code has been thoroughly reviewed by these experts to prevent any vulnerabilities.