World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency backed by former US President Donald Trump, was unable to sell its tokens as planned due to a website crash.
Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial (WLF) cryptocurrency project began offering its WLFI tokens on October 15. Co-founder Zachary Folkman previously said that more than 100,000 people were on the waiting list to invest.
However, after the sale, the website was constantly overloaded, sometimes down, displaying the message "We are under maintenance", leading to limited sales. Etherscan data shows that only 4% of the 100,000 people who registered to buy tokens were able to buy.
WLF later announced that the platform sold more than 532 million WLFI tokens at $0.015, representing 3% of the project's 20 billion tokens, or less than $8 million. Previously, The Block reported, citing sources, that Trump wanted to raise $300 million through the project in its initial offering.
When contacted by CNBC, a WLF representative did not comment.
WLF, founded by former US President Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and crypto expert Folkman, aims to become a new generation of banks in the crypto world, with features such as deposits, loans and many other models. Since August, Mr. Trump and his family have been promoting the project, called The DeFiant Ones, a play on the word DeFi (decentralized finance). 20% of WLFI tokens will be allocated to the founding team, including the Trump family.
Details about WLF have not been released, including a white paper. In previous interviews, Folkman said that the criteria for purchasing tokens are that investors have a net worth of over $1 million and have earned at least $200,000 per year over the past two years. However, it is unclear whether the project has implemented this policy.
The WLF's unsuccessful launch is considered disadvantageous to presidential candidate Donald Trump, with three weeks left until the US presidential election.
Mr. Trump has been against cryptocurrencies. As president, he called them a “fraud” and disliked them because they were “created to compete with the dollar.” However, he has recently changed his mind, declaring himself the “cryptocurrency president” and wanting the remaining Bitcoin to be created in the United States.