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The digital asset venture promoted by Donald Trump has reached its goal of raising $1 billion through token sales and has offered more to the public as it capitalizes on the enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies backed by the incoming US president.
World Liberty Financial, a project backed by Trump and his three sons, said Monday it had sold 21 billion tokens, surpassing its October launch goal of selling 20 billion, or $1 billion.
The WLF, which was created in the run-up to the election by Trump’s long-term business partners and others, added that it will make another 5 billion tokens available from the total $100 billion supply “due to massive demand and overwhelming interest.” “.
The surge in demand for WLF tokens marks a sharp contrast to the thin sales it experienced in the opening months since launch, and comes as the Trump family has ramped up its cryptocurrency push ahead of his inauguration.
Over the weekend, both Donald Trump and his wife Melania launched memecoins, which surged in value, while Eric Trump, an enthusiastic WLF promoter, attended a crypto industry gala event in Washington to celebrate his father’s inauguration his.
Trump has eagerly accompanied the crypto industry on the election trail, and executives have warmed to him, believing he will end the regulatory crackdown they faced under the Biden administration.
The WLF has yet to present its plans. The coins give holders only limited voting rights and no economic rights, and cannot be traded or sold on the WLF.
Justin Sun, the crypto entrepreneur who bought and ate a $6 million banana artwork in November, said last week that he had invested another $45 million in WLF. The purchase by Sun, which has been sued by the US securities regulator for fraud and other securities law violations, brought its total investment to $75 million.
Trump has already appointed several crypto-friendly names to top jobs, including Paul Atkins as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and venture capitalist David Sacks in the new role of AI and crypto czar.
In return, crypto companies and billionaires have offered financial support to Trump, with stablecoin operator Circle and blockchain payments group Ripple among the companies that paid into the inauguration committee. Bitcoin briefly hit a new record of more than $109,000 on Monday before falling again on expectations that Trump will issue executive orders in the coming days that will boost the fortunes of the US industry.
However, many of the crypto market’s biggest names are concerned that Trump’s move into digital assets could be seen as trying to extract value from supporters. The company that owns the Trump memecoin is affiliated with the Trump Organization and will receive a portion of the trading revenue related to the token.
“Basically, we had an unofficial rule that presidents wouldn’t start or run businesses that might pose a conflict of interest,” Nic Carter, a venture capitalist at Castle Island Ventures, told X.
Donald Trump’s memecoin fell to $52 on Monday, from a weekend high of $75. The Melania Trump memecoin, whose release caused the Donald coin to briefly fall 40 percent, was at $8.43, compared to Sunday’s high of $13.64.
Memecoins have no business model, cash flow or underlying value and do not give their owners a share of any physical asset and rely on their popularity among traders for their value.
“A chaotic new era of crypto is here,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a note, adding that Trump’s memecoin launch “is a massive paradigm shift” that “marks a new regulatory era, where governments view crypto as a technology to reach the masses directly.
