World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency project backed by former US President Donald Trump , began its token sale on Tuesday, but its website crashed shortly after.
The “whitelisting” process for the highly anticipated but still under-disclosed decentralized finance (DeFi) project opened on September 30 to only accredited investors and those outside the US. As of Monday, “over 100,000 people” had registered to purchase the WLFI token, project co-founder Zach Folkman told CNBC . As of press time, the site was back online.
However, according to blockchain data tracked on Etherscan, as of Tuesday afternoon, only 5,317 different wallet addresses held the token. World Liberty Financial noted that more than 532 million of the 20 billion tokens available for public sale in total had been sold.
WLFI advisor Sandy Peng told CoinDesk that the outages were caused by excessive traffic. “The team did not expect this level of interest,” Peng said, adding that the site received 72 million unique visits in the first hour after the token was launched.
CoinDesk reported that the WLFI token is currently non-transferable and will be used to manage the World Liberty Financial platform. Token holders will be able to vote on protocol updates, technical changes, promotional partnerships, and oversight of security risks. The platform will also allow users to lend and borrow cryptocurrencies.
While Trump and his team have promoted World Liberty Financial as a tool to help the unbanked and underbanked, only those who meet the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) accredited investor requirements can purchase the WLFI token. To become an accredited investor, a person must earn at least $200,000 (or $300,000 for a spouse) and/or have at least $1 million in net assets outside of their primary residence.
Donald Trump is working on the project with his three sons
World Liberty Financial released a document called the “gold paper” on Tuesday that listed Trump as its “lead crypto partner,” while his three sons — Eric, Donald Trump Jr. and Barron — serve as Web3 ambassadors.
According to the document, the World Liberty Financial protocol aims to provide users with access to third-party DeFi applications, digital wallet providers, and the ability to acquire, hold, and transfer stablecoins and non-securities digital assets. Specifically, the document states that the tokens are “not available to U.S. persons” and “not registered by U.S. authorities or other authorities.”
