The Trump family’s latest venture, World Liberty Financial, entered the cryptocurrency market with a difficult start, as their website crashes hindered investors’ ability to participate in the initial token sale event. The crypto token, WLFI, was made available for purchase starting around 9 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. However, ongoing technical issues continue to direct some users to an error page displaying a message indicating connectivity problems.
According to data obtained from the analytics platform Etherscan, approximately 8,500 individuals have engaged in the presale so far, acquiring around 750 million tokens, which accounts for 3.75 percent of the total presale offering. A representative from World Liberty Financial had previously mentioned on the social media platform X that 100,000 accredited U.S. investors had been preapproved following their expression of interest in the token.
Adviser Sandy Peng informed the crypto media outlet CoinDesk that the website experienced downtime due to an overwhelming surge in traffic, with over 70 million unique visitors accessing the site within an hour of the token release. World Liberty Financial has not provided further comments on this development.
The website’s technical difficulties have made it challenging to gauge investor interest in the WLFI token accurately. The problematic launch raises concerns about potential setbacks the Trump project might pose to the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry if it does not succeed.
Since August, the Trump family has marketed World Liberty Financial as an initiative to “revolutionize finance” and “make finance great again.” The website lists Donald Trump, a presidential candidate, as the “chief crypto advocate,” with his sons—Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron—serving as “Web3 ambassadors.”
The World Liberty Financial platform is designed to offer peer-to-peer borrowing and lending, in line with decentralized finance principles. However, specific details about the project remain sparse. Despite multiple announcements and a published manifesto outlining the project’s goals, the Trumps have not provided much information regarding the platform’s operations or the services intended for customers.
Consequently, this lack of transparency has allowed room for exploitation by bad actors. In late August, impersonators utilized the project’s Telegram channel to promote a fraudulent token giveaway. Additionally, in early September, the X accounts belonging to Lara Trump and Tiffany Trump were reportedly compromised and used to promote another crypto token allegedly linked to World Liberty Financial.
