Trump-endorsed WLFI falls short of $300m target

World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance project backed by the Trump family, sold just 4% of its public token supply after technical glitches halted its launch.

Within 24 hours of WLFI’s launch, the Trump-backed real-world asset protocol raised nearly $11 million by selling just under 800 million tokens to investors. WLFI had planned to raise $300 million by selling 20 billion tokens starting Tuesday, October 15, but website issues and scammers impersonating WLFI initially marred the project’s launch.

Still, Etherscan data confirms that thousands of investors are flocking to the Trump-approved DeFi startup. Despite a surprising start, 3,000 unique addresses collected nearly 350 million WLFI tokens in the first hour.

Although the project previously boasted 100,000 whitelisted investors ahead of launch, WLFI had approximately 9,300 token holders at the time of publication. Many might think the debut was lackluster, considering the user count was unimpressive.

This year alone, numerous memecoins on blockchains like Solana (SOL) reached a market cap of hundreds of millions within hours of launch.

The reasons for World Liberty Financial’s quiet start are unclear, but clues may lie in WLFI’s token dynamics. WLFI coins are non-transferable, leaving little room for price discovery and on-chain speculation.

Instead, the governance token allows its holders to lend, provide liquidity, and borrow money, among other DeFi-related actions. World Liberty Financial has joined Trump’s pro-crypto campaign trail after the former US President seemingly embraced the industry he had previously criticized.

With less than a month until the election, the Republican candidate shared plans to position the United States as the global crypto capital, create a national strategic Bitcoin (BTC) reserve, and support blockchain innovation.

While doubts remain, some see Trump’s possible victory as positive for cryptocurrencies. This outlook is also reflected in social media and prediction markets such as Polymarket.

As crypto.news reported, Trump gained the largest lead at Polymarket over Democratic pick Kamala Harris. Latest data from the Polygon-based betting platform showed Trump’s odds of winning have increased even further; Trump rose to 59.5% and Harris rose to 40.5%.