Trump’s World Liberty Token Drops on First Day of Trading
Digital tokens linked to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency initiative, World Liberty Financial, dropped in value on Monday during their first day of trading.
The tokens, called $WLFI, were offered to investors after the Trump family and their business partners introduced the project last year. The platform functions as a decentralized finance system and has also released a stablecoin.
In July, token holders voted to make them tradable, opening the door for buying and selling — and potentially increasing the value of the president’s stake in them.
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According to World Liberty, early investors are allowed to sell up to 20% of their tokens. On Monday’s launch, WLFI initially traded above $0.30 but later declined, dropping around 12% to $0.246 by 1840 GMT, based on CoinGecko data. That gave the token a market capitalization just under $7 billion, ranking it as the 31st largest cryptocurrency in circulation, according to CoinGecko. Major exchanges, including Binance, OKX, and Bybit, have listed the token.
Since its debut last year, the Trump family has earned an estimated $500 million from the venture, according to Reuters calculations based on company terms, blockchain transaction analysis, and publicly reported agreements.
The tokens were not tradable when first sold. Instead, holders were given voting rights on certain aspects of the project, such as updates to its underlying code. Early backers have said their main motivation for buying $WLFI was its association with Trump and the expectation that his support would boost its value.
By making the tokens tradable, investors can now set the price, opening the door to speculation, generating trading fees for exchanges, and attracting broader interest from the crypto community.
However, World Liberty and Trump’s wider crypto ventures have drawn criticism from Democratic lawmakers and ethics experts. They argue that the Trump family’s involvement in digital assets — while the president influences cryptocurrency regulation — presents serious conflicts of interest. The White House, though, has consistently said that Trump’s assets are managed in a trust by his children, denying any conflict.
