What We Know about Trump's World Liberty Financial (WLFI)

U.S. Presidential hopeful Donald Trump appeared live on X last night in a conversation hosted by Rug Radio's Farokh, where he aimed to both lock in the crypto vote and launch his latest onchain foray, World Liberty Financial (WLFI).

While neither a newcomer to crypto nor politics, Trump has certainly managed to capture both the enthusiasm and capital of crypto voters with a newfound zeal for the industry this election season.

Although he may have occasionally promoted anti-crypto sentiment while largely failing to implement beneficial policies for the industry during his prior stint as POTUS, Trump’s collection of NFT trading cards, big-picture promises to promote crypto-aligned interests, and now endorsement of WLFI have galvanized support for the controversial candidate among Americans within the crypto community.

Today, we’re unpacking everything you need to know about the Trump-associated WLFI.

🧐 What We Already Knew About WLFI

When initially teased by the former President’s eldest sons early last month, WLFI was advertised as a “digital real estate” project called The DeFiant Ones; it rebranded later that month and named Arbitrum-based long tail lending market co-founder Corey Caplan as an advisor in early September. 

Leaked WLFI whitepapers and public Github repositories reported on shortly afterwards by Coindesk indicated that it would be a fork of Dough Finance, an Aave deposit frontend that was hacked for $2.1M in July, and identified four Dough employees as holding key positions within WLFI.

The whitepaper reviewed by Coindesk also suggested that WLFI would have a non-transferable governance token, of which a relatively large 70% would be set aside for insiders and the remaining 30% would be made available for public purchase via an ICO-style sale.

Somewhat assuaging concerns about WLFI’s apparent low-effort nature, Scroll L2 founder Sandy Peng and Polychain general partner Luke Person were both announced as advisors last weekend ahead of yesterday’s launch.

🎥 What We Heard Live on X

Although Donald Trump Sr. conversed with Farokh for nearly half an hour, the Presidential candidate himself did not directly speak on WLFI.  The majority of Trump’s interview segment focused on the recent attempts against his life and his ongoing campaign.

While Trump provided little substance on how he would practically help crypto when adjacent topics were addressed, the former President did berate a hostile SEC for its impositions against a fledgling industry and indicated that it is important for America to lead in crypto because it is an important technology.

Never the one to shy away from fear mongering, Trump claimed that if he does not win the Presidency, some individuals in crypto who are not currently being targeted by U.S. financial regulators will find themselves “living in hell” the day after the election when new probes commence under the Harris administration.

Following the former President’s departure, a variety of speakers associated with WLFI joined the interview including Trump’s eldest sons (Donald Jr. & Eric), Dough Finance co-founders Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, long-time Trump associate/fellow property developer Steve Witkoff (and his son Zach Witkoff), and Dolomite co-founder Corey Caplan.

During this segment of the interview, the WLFI team expounded on the various aspects of decentralized finance that resonated with them the most.

The Trump sons spoke to their family’s personal tribulations with arbitrary debanking due to blowback from their father’s past political campaigns, lauding the permissionless ideals behind DeFi of providing open finance to all on equal terms.

Two hours into the interview, the topic of a WLFI token was at last broached. Reading from a prepared written statement, Dough Finance’s Folkman confirmed that there will be a non-transferable WLFI governance token offered for sale that confers no economic rights.

Due to the inherent uncertainty surrounding token sales, only persons exempt from mandatory registration under SEC Regulations D and S (i.e.; accredited U.S. and non-sanctioned international investors) will be able to purchase WLFI.

Early reporting that 70% of WLFI would be reserved for insiders was rebuked, with the team revealing that only 20% of total supply has been set aside for insider compensation. WLFI has no VC involvement and will offer 63% of its tokens to the public in an initial sale, with the remaining 17% of tokens reserved for user incentives.

🗳️ Crypto’s Best Hope?

The WLFI team portrayed immense confidence that it can finally create the user-friendly frontend to catalyze unprecedented liquidity inflows from regular individuals into crypto, an arguably lofty goal considering that no other application has managed to achieve such a feat.

Even though Trump failed to provide crypto policy specifics and entirely avoided talking about WLFI, for many crypto fanatics, he remains the clear best Presidential candidate when positioned against Kamala Harris, who has largely refused to engage with the crypto industry.

Considering that 20% of WLFI tokens are going towards insiders, the deeply involved Donald has immense incentives to craft financial regulations providing clarity on the security status of digital assets that would enable the monetization of his WLFI stash. 

Although many perceive a stark chasm between the policies of Trump and Harris, it's also worth highlighting that both candidates support unsustainable fiscal deficit expansion that will lead to dollar debasement and provide arguably supportive tailwinds for store of value assets like BTC and gold.