Trump’s World Liberty token falls in first day of trading

The digital tokens backing the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, fell in value on Monday (Sep 1) in their first day of trading.

The World Liberty tokens, known as $WLFI, were sold to investors after the Trump family and its business partners last year launched the venture, a decentralised finance platform that has also issued a stablecoin.

Investors in the tokens voted in July to make them tradable, paving the way for their sale and purchase – and potentially boosting the value of the president’s holdings of them.

Early investors can sell up to 20 per cent of their holdings, World Liberty has said.

The tokens initially traded above US$0.30 in their on Monday debut but later fell in price. They were down about 12 per cent at US$0.246 as at 1840 GMT, according to CoinGecko data.

That gave the token a total market capitalisation of just below US$7 billion, making WLFI the 31st largest crypto token in circulation, CoinGecko data showed.

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Several of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, OKX and Bybit, are offering the tokens on their platforms.

Since World Liberty’s launch last year, the Trump family has made around US$500 million from the project, according to Reuters calculations based on the company’s terms and conditions, transactions traced by crypto analysis firms, and publicly disclosed deals.

The tokens were not made tradable at their initial sale. Instead, they gave holders the right to vote on some changes to the business, such as its underlying code. Early investors have said the primary draw of $WLFI was the connection to Trump and their expectations that the tokens would grow in value due to his backing.

Making the tokens tradable allows investors to determine their price, enabling speculation, earning trading fees for exchanges that list them, and likely stoking interest from a wider swath of crypto investors.

World Liberty and Trump’s other crypto businesses have faced criticism from Democratic lawmakers and government ethics experts who say the Trump family’s forays into the cryptocurrency businesses, at the same time as the president reshapes the regulatory framework that governs digital currencies, represent profound conflicts of interest.

The White House has said repeatedly that Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children and that there are no conflicts of interest. REUTERS