It’s a flop for Donald Trump. The cryptocurrency platform co-founded by the former president had a particularly sluggish start on Tuesday, with only a tiny portion of the digital tokens offered by the start-up finding buyers.
The Republican candidate for the American presidential election announced in mid-September the launch of this platform, called World Liberty Financial. In addition to his sons, Donald Trump is associated, in this project, with several entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency sector.
Differences from traditional digital currencies
World Liberty Financial put on sale on Tuesday tokens, digital identifiers which can be cryptocurrencies but are also used for other purposes, for example for NFTs (digital property titles).
WLFI tokens, their acronym, will give the right to participate in the governance of the platform and cannot be resold, unlike a traditional digital currency. Some 20 billion WLFI were offered, for a unit value of 1.5 cents. The whole thing was therefore valued at $300 million.
At the start of Tuesday evening, several hours after the sale opened, less than 3% of the tokens had found buyers. Platform officials said Monday that more than 100,000 qualified investors had registered for the sale.
Technical problems
Certain financial products are only accessible to qualified investors, participants who provide several guarantees, particularly in terms of their income. Several observers put the low sales total partly down to technical problems. During the first hours, it was sometimes impossible to connect to the WLF site, which displayed an error message.
Our file on the American presidential election
World Liberty Financial has issued a total of 100 billion tokens, of which 20 billion were offered on Tuesday. Some 22.5 billion were granted to the company DT Marks Defi, to which Donald Trump is attached. If the tokens released into circulation on Tuesday were placed, the valuation of the entire WLFI would then reach $1.5 billion.
