Trump’s Crypto Site Crashed Following the WLFI Token Sale

Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency initiative, World Liberty Financial, commenced its token sale on Tuesday, leading to a crash of its website shortly afterward.

The project, which has generated significant interest despite remaining largely unexplained, opened its whitelist for accredited investors and non-U.S. persons on September 30th. According to co-founder Zach Folkman, over 100,000 individuals registered to purchase the WLFI token. CNBC reported that the website appeared to be back online at the time of publication.

Blockchain data monitored by Etherscan showed that as of Tuesday afternoon, 5,317 unique wallet addresses held the token. World Liberty Financial announced the sale of more than 532 million tokens out of the 20 billion available for public sale.

WLFI advisor Sandy Peng informed CoinDesk that the outages were due to an overwhelming amount of traffic, with the website receiving 72 million unique visits within the first hour of the token launch. Peng indicated that the demand exceeded the team’s expectations.

CoinDesk further reports that the WLFI token, currently non-transferrable, will serve as a governance mechanism for the World Liberty Financial platform. Token holders are expected to have input on protocol upgrades, technical changes, promotional partnerships, and security risk management. The platform will allow users to borrow and lend cryptocurrency.

Despite the promotion of World Liberty Financial as a tool for underserved individuals in banking, only those meeting the Securities and Exchange Commission’s requirements for accredited investors can purchase WLFI. The criteria include an income of at least $200,000 (or $300,000 with a spouse) or a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding the primary residence.

World Liberty Financial released a “gold paper” on Tuesday, naming Trump as the “chief crypto associate,” with his sons Eric, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron listed as Web3 Ambassadors.

The paper outlines the protocol’s intention to provide users with information and access to third-party decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, including digital wallet providers for acquiring, holding, and transferring stable coins and non-security digital assets. It specifies that the tokens “ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR U.S. PERSONS” and “HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED WITH ANY U.S. OR OTHER AUTHORITY.”

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