Trump-backed World Liberty Financial to start public sale on Oct 15th

World Liberty Financial, a crypto project backed by the Trump family, will open a public presale on October 15. The event is open to US-based accredited investors and to all worldwide buyers, barring embargoed countries and territories.

World Liberty Financial will open a token presale from October 15, for all US-based accredited investors with no restrictions to investors from other countries. The World Liberty Financial project aims for a bankless experience while tapping the influence of the Trump family. 

🦅🇺🇸 Big news! @WorldLibertyFi public sale starts Oct. 15th, open to everyone who qualifies through the whitelist. Join us for a Twitter Spaces on Oct. 14th at 8 AM EST to learn more. Stay tuned for updates!

— WLFI (@worldlibertyfi) October 11, 2024

The WLFI token sale will require wallet whitelisting and KYC. The pre-screening process for the platform started in September. The platform is still not operational and will share more details of the token sale on October 14. There is still no announcement on whether the presale would require crypto or fiat.

Through the WLFI token sale, the platform will place 20% of its tokens for $300M, giving the platform a $1.5B valuation. The sale is set to last for 24 hours, or until it raises the target sum – a rare feat in a market with a weak appetite for new token sales and a complex profit structure.

The size of the fundraising is ambitious, and will hopefully get a boost from the Trump family fame. With just 20 days to the US election date, WLFI may benefit from the peak popularity of the Trump brand. The size of the fundraising surpasses even some of the most successful ICOs and will leave buyers with tokens locked for at least 12 months. 

World Liberty Financial recently published its plans for a mass-adoption DeFi protocol. The protocol will offer account-based registration and intuitive wallets. The WLFI token will run on Ethereum and Scroll, hoping to tap the available Ethereum liquidity. The project sees Ethereum as capable of carrying institutional-grade finance, while Scroll will be the low-fee layer for retail transactions.

World Liberty Financial is tapping crypto insiders like Ryan Fang to advise on new user onboarding. Fang is the founder of the Ankr protocol and the creator of the Telegram-compatible Tomo wallet. 

As its first on-chain business, World Liberty Financial has proposed the creation of an instance of the Aave V3 lending protocol. In exchange, Aave will receive 7% of the supply of WIFI tokens as a governance tool. The World Liberty lending pool will accept USDC, USDT, ETH, and WBTC as collateral, and will not involve the native WLFI token. 

Since its soft launch in September, World Liberty Financial has announced its partnership with Aave, and will only launch after a community vote and permission, instead of just forking the Aave codebase and lending model. 

As a DeFi protocol, World Liberty will repeat tried and true recipes, taking the approach of protocols like Sky (formerly Maker), which also uses Aave for liquidity and passive income. The project stressed its potential for unbanking and permissionless crypto lending, aimed at average investors. World Liberty Financial taps some of the most solid DeFi products and consultants from the crypto space.

Trump brand is hot, but will it work for DeFi?

Trump’s brand works like magic for crypto market prices. Even the rumors of Barron Trump’s involvement in meme tokens have led to rallies for some of the top Trump-themed assets.

The brand also gave rise to the whole PolitiFi sector, setting up several tokens for top exposure. As of October 11, the PolitiFi list of tokens still centered around Trump, with a total market capitalization of $835M. MAGA, one of the top memes, is up 60% in the past week, to $4.83. 

However, meme tokens are extremely easy to buy or sell, which is not the case for the new WLFI asset. Some of the buyers may be forced to hold their investment for the long term, while the Trump family still controls a large part of the asset’s supply. 

The other effect of the Trump brand is the crypto-based betting space on Polymarket. Trump as a potential winner has drawn in $468.5 in bets. The 2024 US Presidential election market has seen $1.7B in betting volumes.