World Liberty Financial Launches Token Sale

World Liberty Financial, a notable DeFi protocol backed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, officially began its public token sale on Tuesday morning.

As of 7:25 p.m. ET, about 610 million WLFI tokens had been sold, leaving 19.4 billion tokens available. At a price of $0.015 per token, the sales amounted to approximately $9.15 million. The project faced some website downtimes on Tuesday morning, with the sale launching between 8-9 a.m. ET, reportedly raising $5 million within the first hour.

The initial WLFI sale aims to raise $300 million by selling 20% of the total token supply, valuing the project at $1.5 billion. According to their roadmap, WLFI will serve as a governance token for decisions regarding future platform developments. Importantly, tokens will be non-transferable during the first year. Co-founder Zak Folkman mentioned that since the whitelist went live on September 30, “well over 100,000 people” have signed up.

World Liberty Financial is co-founded by Steve and Zach Witkoff, Folkman, and Chase Herro. Former President Donald Trump is touted as the “chief crypto advocate,” with his sons – Donald Jr., Eric, and Barron – serving as web3 ambassadors.

“Big news! The World Liberty Financial token sale is now live,” Trump posted on X Tuesday night. “Crypto is the future. Let’s embrace this incredible technology and lead the world in the digital economy.”

Reactions to World Liberty Financial have been mixed, with both critics and advocates expressing concerns over its potential impact on the crypto industry.

Additionally, bitcoin’s price has increased about 15% in October, partly attributed to Trump’s climbing election odds against Vice President Kamala Harris, as per Bernstein analysts. They noted, “We believe the recent bitcoin strength is being driven by the return of bitcoin’s correlation to Trump’s election odds.”

Despite support for digital assets from both political sides, the crypto market response seems more robust with the positive trend in Trump’s election predictions.