Trump-backed World Liberty Financial stumbles at launch, website goes offline
World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency project backed by Donald Trump and his sons, appears to have launched, though the website has struggled under the initial load, repeatedly going offline.
Blockchain data suggests that the token currently has over 2,900 holders, and 0x5be9a4959308A0D0c7bC0870E319314d8D957dBB, an address that seems to be a multisignature wallet for this project, holds approximately $3.7 million in ether, $1.2 million in tether, and $240,000 worth of USDC.
It was previously reported that over 100,000 investors had provided the documents required to be placed on the whitelist ahead of the token’s launch.
However, the launch has not all been smooth sailing with the World Liberty Financial website struggling to stay online and appearing to be frequently inaccessible.
What is World Liberty Financial?
World Liberty Financial is a thin wrapper around the Aave lending protocol that counts the former president and his three sons as members. It has optimistically claimed that it will “restructure where the United States debt is held” and threaten the current financial system. However, details on how it could ever achieve either of those things have been scant.
This project appears to have been forked from the recently hacked Dough Finance and includes many of the same team members, including Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro. Herro and Folkman previously led Subify, a Patreon alternative that promised to “stand the test of time” before quietly failing.
Trump has previously experimented in the NFT space, but this is the first time he has been willing to lend his name in the middle of a campaign to a project that has claimed its goal is to usurp the financial system of the country he intends to lead.