The project has raised $11 million so far, falling short of the $300 million target.
The tokens are non-transferrable which could have deterred speculative investors
Trump’s announcement of the project on X failed to create a notable spike in token sales.
The Trump-family supported World Liberty Financial has managed to sell just 4% of its intended token sale target 24 hours after going live, despite massive hype and an announcement from Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Just over 792.36 million tokens of a 20 billion target have been sold since its hushed start at 12:40 UTC on Tuesday, raising nearly $11 million for the project.
Almost 2,900 investors bought the token despite the site suffering numerous outages during its first hour, with over 344 million of the platform’s WLFI tokens sold to around 3,000 unique wallets in that period, as CoinDesk first reported. The project has since gained another 6,000 unique holders, Etherscan data shows.
Trump’s X announcement of the token sale preceded just over 180 million additional token purchases, but it failed to create a spike.
Each token costs $0.015 as of Wednesday, and holders are purchasing less than $1,000 worth of the token on average, analysis of the site’s data shows. An Ethereum wallet connected to the project holds just over $8 million in ether (ETH), and $3 million worth of other tokens (majorly stablecoins).
That’s a dud start for the project in an industry where memecoins and whitepapers can often raise millions of dollars in the hours after offering their tokens. The project hoped to raise $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, as reported.
Part of the muted interest could be the nature of the token itself: WLFI serves as a non-transferable governance token for the platform, enabling users to participate in DeFi activities like borrowing, lending, and creating liquidity pools.
That means users can not speculate on the prices of the token or sell it at a higher value to investors in the future – dimming its prospects as an investment.
World Liberty Financial is part of Trump’s campaign, in which he vowed to make America a global powerhouse for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies if elected in November.
Traders largely view a Trump win as bullish for the industry compared to Democrat Kamala Harris, who isn’t perceived as overly crypto-friendly. He is currently a marginal favorite to win the election, with Polymarket putting his chance at 59% compared to 40% for Harris.