- World Liberty Financial launched on Tuesday.
- The project has divided the DeFi community.
- Anthony Scaramucci has labelled it as a “scam.”
“Selfish.”
“A scam.”
”A good thing.”
Reactions to the launch of World Liberty Financial, the crypto project backed by former US President Donald Trump and his sons, were mixed on Tuesday.
Despite some fearing that World Liberty Financial was a high-risk, low-reward endeavour — a “distraction” that could metastasize into a “huge embarrassment” and a boondoggle, as crypto VC Nic Carter put it — others saw it as an opportunity for DeFi.
“[World Liberty Financial] demonstrates a stunningly strong embrace of the industry,” Robert Leshner, co-founder and CEO of asset tokenisation firm Superstate, told DL News.
“But also selfish judgement rife with conflicts of interest that distracts from the opportunity to craft sorely needed crypto policy and legislation.”
Coming less than three weeks ahead of the US election and after Trump vowed to make the US a “Bitcoin superpower,” the advent of World Liberty Financial raised expectations that a new era may be dawning for crypto.
Rocky start
Instead, the project got off to a rocky start.
Its website crashed and was down for several hours on Tuesday and World Liberty Financial only sold $11 million in tokens in its first day of trading, falling short of its total goal of selling $300 million-worth of tokens.
Moreover, World Liberty Financial’s decision to lockup the sale of tokens for 12 months probably dampened action in the token.
Meanwhile, the project’s goal seemed clear. World Liberty Financial’s planned to earn a valuation of $1.5 billion through the initial sale of 20 billion tokens, according to The Block.
More than 100,000 accredited investors had signed up to purchase WLFI tokens ahead of its launch, a representative said on X on Monday.
‘Surreal’
In any event, the venture left the crypto community divided.
“It’s kind of surreal to see the leading presidential candidate engaging with DeFi and promoting a project,” Mike Silagadze, founder of Ether.Fi, the fourth-largest DeFi protocol said. “Overall I think it’s a good thing.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is 2% ahead of Trump in FiveThirtyEight’s national poll of polls. Conversely, a Polymarket bet gives the Republican candidate an almost 17% lead over his Democratic rival.
Platt argued that the launch of World Liberty Financial was a net positive no matter what will happen with the project. “Onboarding people into DeFi and taking a fee is bullish for DeFi,” he said.
World Liberty Financial’s “gold paper” — a decidedly Trumpian spin on the crypto practice of releasing so-called white papers that blueprint new products — said the project will provide “information and access to third-party DeFi applications.”
That includes noncustodial crypto wallets, lending pools, and lending-and-borrowing protocols. Aave, a lending protocol, will be the first.
Not everyone was convinced. Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of investment firm SkyBridge Capital who briefly served as the Trump White House’s director of communications and has since become a staunch Trump critic, called the whole project a “scam.”
It’s “a money scam,” Scaramucci told CoinDesk. “He can get some of his donors to funnel money into that. It ends up in his pocket and then he can fund things that he needs to do for himself. I mean, it’s a transparent scam, and you should avoid it at all costs.”
World Liberty Financial did not immediately return requests for comment.
Update, October 17: This story was updated to include Robert Leshner’s current title.
Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi Correspondent. Got a tip? Email at aleks@dlnews.com.
