Donald Trump-Backed World Liberty Financial Off To A Slow Start — Raises Just 4% Of The Token Fundraising Target

Donald Trump-backed cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) has been off to a slow start, managing to raise just 4% of its token presale target within the first 48 hours of its launch.

What happened: About $12.46 million worth of the platform's WLFI governance token have been sold as of this writing, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard, well short of the $300 million target announced earlier.

Roughly 830.43 million tokens have been sold to 9,881 unique wallets, with the total number of sales closing in on 12,000. Each token costs $0.015 at the time of writing.

Adam Cochran, a cryptocurrency market observer and Trump critic, said on the flop start, "If you think "the markets" favor Trump being president, why aren't accredited investors lining up to buy this project?"

So in an industry where pictures of cute animals go to billions, and presale addresses raise tens of millions, Trump can only raise $9m, or 3% of his goal, on a DeFi project he promoted on all his platforms?

If you think "the markets" favor Trump being president, why aren't… https://t.co/rulf5v7rLk

— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) October 16, 2024

The WLFI team didn't immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment on the slow start.

See Also: Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest Says Ethereum Is A Big Idea That Will Transform The Financial Services Industry — ETH Is Beginning To ‘Develop Attributes’ Similar To US Treasury Bills

Why It Matters: Promoted aggressively by Trump and his family in recent weeks, the decentralized finance (DeFi) project has garnered massive hype right in the middle of the GOP nominee's presidential campaign.

The WLFI token would serve as the platform's governance token, enabling users to engage in borrowing, lending, and other DeFi activities.

However, the token is non-transferable and non-yielding, disallowing investors from speculating on its price in the market as they do for other cryptocurrency tokens, a feature that might be contributing to the project's dull token presale.

In  X Spaces earlier this week, the team behind WLFI said that the project was focused on preserving the supremacy of the U.S. dollar through dollar-backed stablecoins rather than speculative assets like Bitcoin BTC/USD.

Price Action: At the time of writing, Dogecoin was exchanging hands at $0.1252, up 7.58% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro. 

Image via Shutterstock

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