When Trump fans snapped up $550 million worth of WLFI, the token tied to the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto project, they thought they were getting the deal of the century.
Tokens bought for $0.015 and $0.05 between October 2024 and January 2025 hit an all-time high of $0.33 when they began trading last September, turning modest purchases into small fortunes overnight — at least on paper.
But there was only one catch.
The creators of World Liberty Financial, which include US President Donald Trump and his sons Eric, Donald Jr. and Barron, have given themselves sole power to decide who can sell and when.
The project has so far released 20% of its tokens and promised a vote among holders on when the rest will be available for trading.
But months passed and that vote did not materialize.
Now dozens of token holders are taking to the World Liberty Financial forum, begging the protocol’s creators to let them cash in as they watch WLFI’s value evaporate.
The token has fallen by around 54% in the last five months.
“Nearly 80% of WLFI presale tokens are still locked after almost two years,” said a WLFI holder. “I endured volatility and silence because I believed. But at what point does patience turn into negligence?”
“They are my investments and I want access to them,” said another. “We became hostages.”
The pleas have so far been ignored.
To add to their holders’ woes, the creators of World Liberty have floated a proposal to distribute WLFI as incentives to encourage more people to use the protocol, potentially putting more pressure on the token’s price.
A spokesman for World Liberty Financial said DL News the project team is in frequent and regular contact with its global community.
The situation surrounding the WLFI token echoes that of dozens of other crypto projects.
The industry, which is still largely unregulated, has become a playground for cryptocurrency peddlers who make big promises, raise millions of dollars, then leave those who bought out to dry.
Risk-tolerant crypto investors, often lured by the promise of huge profits, flock to such projects without fully understanding what they’re getting into.
It’s a game, the co-founders of World Liberty Financial seem to understand well.
Among them is Chase Herro, a former “get-rich-quick” class instructor who called himself “the dirtbag of the Internet.”
In a since-deleted YouTube video, Herro said: “You can literally sell shit in a box, covered in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story is right, because people will buy it.”
When Herro founded World Liberty Financial in 2024 with an all-star cast of Trump allies — including U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and his sons, Zach and Alex, and longtime business partner Zachary Folkman — they made no promises.
Buried in the protocol’s so-called gold paper, essentially a long-winded marketing pitch, are important details about how the project is set up.
The World Liberty Financial protocol is not directly controlled by WLFI token holders. This potentially confuses token buyers, as other protocols that issue governance tokens give holders control over the protocol.
The impact is that although token holders can create and propose changes, the protocol co-founders review proposals before voting and reserve the right to block them at their own discretion.
In addition, WLFI tokens do not provide any right to any return, dividend, airdrop or other distribution from the protocol, and there is no guarantee that tokens beyond the initial 20% will ever be traded.
This situation leaves disgruntled buyers with very few options.
Even World Liberty Financial’s best-known backer, Tron founder Justin Sun, appears to have been disappointed.
He bought WLFI worth $75 million in the project’s token sale. When some of that reserve was made tradable in September, Sun transferred around $9 million to another crypto wallet.
In response, World Liberty’s creators froze the tokens, preventing Sun from selling them.
Sun promised to buy more WLFI tokens after the incident, which appeared to be a gesture of appeasement towards the protocol’s creators.
Its tokens remain frozen and have since declined in value.
To be sure, not all WLFI holders have buyer’s remorse.
“Most people don’t understand what WLFI will become in the future,” said one token holder at the World Liberty governance forum.
“There will be a transfer of wealth that will make you rich because of the 80% lock-in, but you don’t see it yet, it’s a shame.”
However, even among those who still support World Liberty, there is a widespread feeling that progress on the protocol, whose token is valued at more than $4 billion, is slower than many had hoped.
The project promises, in its golden document, the democratization of finance and access to financial opportunities.
However, so far the products that World Liberty has released have only enriched the co-founders and done little to benefit the token holders.
Its most successful product is the USD1 stablecoin, a competitor to other dollar-linked assets such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.
There are currently more than $5 billion in circulation, making it the fifth largest stablecoin.
It’s unclear how much money World Liberty makes from $1. But based on how much Tether earns running a similar product, USD1 probably brings in several hundred million dollars a year.
According to World Liberty’s gold document, 100% of these profits, plus any other income generated by the protocol, goes directly into the pockets of the Trump family and the Witkoffs, minus $15 million set aside for the protocol’s operating expenses.
All the while, scrutiny of Trump’s crypto dealings is growing.
For the president’s political opponents, the issue has become a sticking point in the passage of the Clarity Act, a sweeping crypto-market structure bill poised to give the industry a much-needed boost.
Democrats say they can’t support the bill because it allows Trump to continue to profit from crypto.
“The White House has made this infinitely more difficult,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, the lead negotiator of the Democratic bill, said Thursday.
“I’ve had private conversations with colleagues and Republican staffers who agree with me… The fact that Donald Trump is going after crypto himself, it’s like creating a Cory coin,” he added, calling it “ridiculous.”
Not a positive development for WLFI token holders caught up in the drama.
At the same time, World Liberty announced that it will hold an in-person forum for the project on February 18 at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s luxury private club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The invitation-only event will “bring together a select group of the smartest people we know and respect in finance and technology,” Donald Trump Jr said in a video message posted on the World Liberty X account.
Whether this will include someone representing the interests of WLFI token holders remains to be seen.
Update, January 30: Added a comment from a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial.
Tim Craig is DL News’ DeFi correspondent in Edinburgh. Contact with advice at tim@dlnews.com.
