Trump Family Crypto Debut Stumbles, Yet He Still Earns $3.6 Billion  

The Trump family’s enterprise, World Liberty Financial, listed its cryptocurrency WLFI on Monday. Within ten minutes, it reached a high of $0.3999, but 24 hours later, it fell to $0.2336, a decline of 25%.  

 

World Liberty Financial was founded in October last year, with U.S. President Donald Trump serving as the honorary co-founder and his three sons as co-founders. The company created 100 billion WLFI tokens, privately selling 25 billion of them for $550 million.  

 

Prior to September 1, these tokens were not publicly offered, and holders could only use them to vote on company affairs.  

 

Last month, World Liberty Financial announced it would publicly sell 24.7 billion WLFI tokens, with 7.8 billion allocated to a “crypto treasury.”  

 

The “crypto treasury” is essentially a Nasdaq-listed blockchain company named ALT5 Sigma. Under their agreement, ALT5 will sell $1.5 billion in equity to World Liberty Financial, with half paid in WLFI.  

 

Before WLFI, Trump had already ventured into the cryptocurrency space multiple times: earlier this year, he launched the “meme coin” $TRUMP, earning $350 million; his media company, Trump Media, purchased $2.5 billion in Bitcoin in June to build a “Bitcoin vault”; and World Liberty Financial itself released a USD-pegged stablecoin, USD1, valued at $2.7 billion, in April.  

 

Before the launch, Donald Trump Jr. hyped it on X, stating:  

 

This isn’t just a meme coin; it’s the backbone of a new financial ecosystem. Freedom + Finance + America First.  

 

 

Despite Donald Trump Jr.’s promotional efforts, WLFI had an inauspicious debut. Although it rose to $0.3999 within ten minutes of launch, its price quickly retreated to the $0.21–$0.23 range. Currently, the total value of tradable WLFI on the market is approximately $6.4 billion, while Trump’s holdings of 15.7 billion WLFI are worth about $3.6 billion.  

 

In a letter in April, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Representative Maxine Waters pointed out that the Trump family’s roles in World Liberty Financial constitute an unprecedented conflict of interest.  

 

They emphasized that this relationship provides the Trump administration with a “clear motive” to push U.S. regulatory bodies like the SEC to adopt stances favorable to the cryptocurrency industry, directly benefiting the president’s family.