Original Author: Alex Xu, Research Partner at Mint Ventures
Introduction
After Circle's listing with its stock price soaring (recently showing a significant decline), stable coin concept stocks in the global stock market have been unusually active. The U.S. stable coin bill "Genius Act" has passed the Senate vote and is boldly advancing to the House of Representatives. Recently, the Trump family's pure-blood project World Liberty Financial has rumors of early token unlocking, which can be considered a heavyweight news in the currently sluggish Altcoin market with a lack of themes.
So how is World Liberty Financial currently performing? How is its token mechanism designed? And what should be used as an anchor for valuation?
The author will attempt to provide a multi-dimensional review of World Liberty Financial's business status, project background details, token mechanism, and valuation expectations, offering several perspectives for observation.
PS: This article represents the author's staged thinking at the time of publication, which may change in the future. The views are highly subjective and may contain errors in facts, data, and reasoning logic. None of the opinions in this article constitute investment advice, and constructive criticism and further discussion from peers and readers are welcome.
WLFI Business: Product Status and Core Competitive Advantages
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is a decentralized financial platform established with the participation of the Trump family, with its core product being the USD1 stablecoin. USD1 is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar and fully backed by cash and U.S. Treasury reserves. World Liberty Financial also has plans for lending (based on Aave) and a DeFi App, but these are not yet online.
USD1 Business Data
As of June 2025, the USD1 stablecoin circulation has reached approximately 2.2 billion U.S. dollars. Among this, BNBchain supply is 2.156 billion, Ethereum supply is 48 million, and TRON supply is 26,000, with BNBchain-issued USD1 accounting for 97.8% of the total supply.
In terms of on-chain user volume, BNBchain has 248,000 token-holding addresses, Ethereum has 66,000, and TRON currently has only 1.
Regarding token ownership, 93.7% of USD1 on BNBchain (corresponding to 2.02 billion) is in two Binance addresses, with 1.9 billion concentrated in one Binance address (0xF977814e90dA44bFA03b6295A0616a897441aceC).
Besides the Trump family, another heavyweight team member is Steven Witkoff, Trump's long-term business partner and New York real estate tycoon, who serves as the honorary co-founder. He is the founder and chairman of Witkoff Group, having known Donald Trump since the 1980s. They have long been close, often playing golf together, and are well-known as "old friends and business partners".
After Trump took office, Steven Witkoff was appointed as the "US Middle East Special Envoy" by Trump, reporting directly to him and playing a core role in major negotiations, including talks involving Israel, Qatar, Russia, and Ukraine. He was also Trump's "private messenger", frequently traveling to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders on Trump's behalf.
The Witkoff family was also actively involved in the project: his sons Zach Witkoff and Alex Witkoff are both co-founders of WLFI.
Besides political and business celebrities, WLFI's technology and operations are primarily handled by crypto industry professionals. Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, both co-founders, are serial entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency field. They previously founded the DeFi platform Dough Finance, which failed due to an early hacker attack, making their entrepreneurial experience less successful. In the WLFI project, Folkman and Herro were initially the main controllers, but in January 2025, they ceded control to an entity controlled by the Trump family.
Another core member, Richmond Teo, serves as the head of WLFI's stablecoin and payment department. Richmond Teo was previously a co-founder and former Asia CEO of the well-known compliance stablecoin company Paxos. The team also includes blockchain practitioners such as Corey Caplan (Technical Strategy Director) and Ryan Fang (Growth Head), as well as traditional financial compliance experts like Brandi Reynolds (Chief Compliance Officer).
The project has invited several advisors, such as Luke Pearson from Polychain Capital and Sandy Peng, co-founder of Ethereum Layer 2 Scroll network. Sandy Peng assisted with operations during the token sale.
Trump Family's Equity Changes in World Liberty Financial
In fact, the Trump family's shareholding in World Liberty Financial has been continuously declining, from an initial 75% to currently 40%.
From the initial 75% to 40%, the decreased equity might have been transferred to Justin Sun, DWF Labs, and potentially the recently announced Aqua 1 Foundation with a $100 million investment (purely speculative).
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach]WLFI project revenue is unrelated to WLFI, WLFI token lacks value capture, and should be significantly discounted when valuing
Currently, 93% of WFLI's stablecoin market value is supported by Binance, with extremely low natural adoption and severely inflated business volume
WLFI might be just one of the Trump family's many "licensed projects", and they will be as ruthless in selling and operating it as with Trump tokens and a series of Trump Non-Fungible Tokens, potentially unable to make long-term investments
The crypto market, especially Altcoins' liquidity, has long been exhausted, with secondary players almost not believing any stories without hard business data support, and most newly listed coins experiencing free fall
...
As an investor, which perspective are you more inclined to adopt? Opinions vary.
In the author's view, the short-term price trend of WLFI token depends on one hand on the final content and timing of the Genius Act, and more importantly on whether the Trump family is willing to place WLFI in a relatively core position as a medium for interest exchange. Specifically, this means "influential individuals/businesses/sovereign states" actively embedding USD1 (even symbolically) into their business processes to obtain political and commercial interests, such as using USD1 as an investment currency (equity investment) or settlement currency (cross-border trade).
If there is a lack of similar dense commercial news after launch, WLFI's position in the Trump family's business landscape may be worrying, as they have better revenue channels.
Let's wait and see the development of WLFI after its launch.
So, when exactly can WLFI tokens be transferred?
I guess it will be after the US Genius Act is finally officially passed (currently passed in the Senate), which will be the time the project can freely operate, and it's not far off.
