Donald Trump's cryptocurrency project, World Liberty Financial, faced a website crash during its WLFI token sale, highlighting the overwhelming interest and access restrictions for investors.
Former President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, faced a significant setback when its website crashed shortly after the launch of its WLFI token sale. The overwhelming interest from potential investors led to a surge in traffic that the site could not handle, highlighting the intense anticipation surrounding this new decentralized finance project.
The WLFI token sale opened on Tuesday, following a whitelist registration that began on September 30 for accredited investors and non-U.S. persons. According to co-founder Zach Folkman, the project garnered interest from “well over 100,000 people.” However, the website was unable to cope with the influx of visitors, leading to its temporary crash.
Sandy Peng, an advisor for WLFI, explained that the team did not anticipate such a high level of interest. The site reportedly received 72 million unique visits within the first hour of the token launch, which contributed to the outages.
As of Tuesday afternoon, blockchain data indicated that only 5,317 unique wallet addresses held the WLFI token. Despite the website issues, World Liberty Financial announced that it had sold over 532 million tokens out of a total of 20 billion available for public sale.
The WLFI token is designed to be non-transferrable for the time being and will serve as a governance tool for the World Liberty Financial platform. Token holders will have the ability to influence protocol upgrades, technical changes, promotional partnerships, and security oversight.
The platform aims to facilitate borrowing and lending of cryptocurrency, providing users with access to third-party decentralized finance applications, including digital wallet providers for stable coins and non-security digital assets.
Despite the project's promotion as a means to assist unbanked and de-banked individuals, the WLFI token is only available to accredited investors. To qualify, individuals must meet specific income or net worth criteria set by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This includes having an income of at least $200,000 (or $300,000 with a spouse) or a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding their primary residence.
World Liberty Financial released a “gold paper” detailing the token, which lists Donald Trump as the “chief crypto associate.” His sons, Eric, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron, are designated as Web3 Ambassadors. The document outlines the protocol's plans to provide users with information and access to various DeFi applications.
Notably, the paper emphasizes that the tokens are not available for U.S. persons and have not been registered with any U.S. or other authorities, raising questions about regulatory compliance and the project's future.
