At its core, World Liberty Financial is not a traditional bank but is designed as a decentralised finance (DeFi) platform where users can borrow, lend, and invest in cryptocurrencies. The founders envision it as a tool for financial independence, particularly for those who are underserved by traditional banking.
Donald Trump launched World Liberty Financial with his sons: Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are leading the effort, and Barron Trump, 18 and a freshman at NYU, is notably involved as the “Chief DeFi Visionary,” signalling a desire to bring a fresh perspective to the project.
In a short video about the company Donald Trump said: "We're embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind". Later Trump Jr. said in a message in the official Telegram channel: "banks and financial institutions are crooked and rig the system against everyday Americans. They shut people out, deny them loans, drown them in paperwork and kill them with legal and processing fees. These banks and the elites who run them want absolute control but that ends now".
The platform will feature its own token, WLFI, which the Trump family has introduced as “the future of crypto.”
The equity structure of WLFI includes 20% of the tokens allocated to the founding team, including Donald Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Jr., and Barron Trump; 17% is designated for user rewards, while the remaining 63% will be available for public purchase.
Despite many, especially the most sceptical, see the large concentration of WLFI governance token held by the founders, team, and service providers, as a form of centralization and a ‘get-rich-quick' scheme, Trump does not appear to have violated any laws.
Moreover, the initial token sale was limited to accredited investors within the United States and non-U.S. citizens, which seems contrary to the project’s apparent mission of helping the underserved obtain loans.
But it's important to point out that by only making the token available to accredited investors in the U.S. (those with a net worth over $1 million), the project will likely be able to qualify for a key SEC exemption that allows companies to issue unregistered securities.
Anyway, users can bypass this requirement by clicking “I live outside of the United States,” but then they must provide proof of residency outside the US in order to continue.
Furthermore, it's also important to note that WLFI tokens are currently non-transferable and cannot be traded on exchanges. WLFI is currently built on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token to govern the World Liberty Financial Protocol. It is non-transferable and locked in wallets with currently no liquidity on secondary markets.
Buyers of World Liberty Financial have no real rights and can’t trade WLFI token, that are intended solely for governance purposes within the World Liberty Financial ecosystem.
Although this may seem like a downside, given that there's no timeline on when the WLFI can be transferred and traded, there are many clues that there will be actual infrastructure behind the token, which will certainly lead to developments that are not foreseeable today, such as the fact of having benefits for token holders, such as dividends and revenues.
Indeed, although today the token is locked, the community can decide via governance proposals if some of existing procedures or distribution has to be altered: token holders can vote on protocol decisions like protocol upgrades, marketing strategies, and governance structure changes. And for this reason all possible developments are open and feasible in the near future.
And for this reason, many famous people in the crypto world have already purchased WLFI tokens, because they believe that the token will somehow pay off in the long run.
So far, Justin Sun, the Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur who founded the blockchain network Tron, has emerged as the most prominent buyer of the token, spending at least $75 million, according to his posts on X.
Crypto investor Mike Dudas, who founded crypto media outlet The Block, bought 9.7 million of World Liberty Financial tokens. Dudas stressed that World Liberty was about the future of decentralized finance.
Another buyer of the tokens is Troy Murray, a crypto entrepreneur based in Puerto Rico. Murray bought about 666,000 $WLFI tokens, the data show.
All of this makes one think of this project as a recipe for something that hasn't yet been made. And to date, a real crypto bank has not yet been created. A decentralized bank that offer services that mimic traditional financial operations but without the involvement of central banks or government regulation.
These include secure payments, savings options, and investments, all powered by blockchain technology. An innovative DeFi-based banking designed to give users more control over their finances, enabling peer-to-peer transactions with minimal fees and increased security measures.
And who knows, who can ever say, that in the near future the holders of WLFI tokens will be the shareholders, the first shareholders, of the first decentralized bank in history. A new California Dream.
After all, today we are as if we were in the 19th century when major gold rushes, or gold fever, took place in the old wild west... at that time we looked for gold nuggets, today we look for bitcoin satoshis; at that time we were looking for new unexplored lands to colonize, today we are looking for new projects in which to be the first investors, the early birds.
And despite the controversial nature of the project and of its creator, World Liberty Financial represents that unexplored, wild and treacherous land to be colonized.