The WLFI token, issued by the cryptocurrency platform World Liberty Financial (WLF) founded by the family of U.S. President Donald Trump, began trading on crypto exchanges. Trading started on the morning of September 1. Within the first hour, trading volume exceeded $1 billion.
On Binance, the token price fluctuated between $0.24 and $0.30. According to WSJ, this corresponds to the capitalization of the Trump family’s share, which amounts to about $5 billion. Trump and his relatives own about one-quarter of all WLFI issued.
World Liberty refers to the president as “Co-Founder Emeritus,” while his sons are listed as official co-founders of the project. The team’s tokens are still locked, but the market capitalization now allows their value to be estimated based on public trading. Before this, the token was sold only through private deals at $0.015.
On the eve of trading, World Liberty completed a reverse merger with a listed company and raised $750 million. According to the publication, the Trump family may receive up to $500 million from this deal, as they retain up to 75% of the proceeds from WLFI’s initial sales.
Attacks on Users and Mass WLFI Thefts
Alongside the start of trading, users reported automatic withdrawals of WLFI after tokens were credited to their wallets. According to analyst @evilcos, hackers are massively exploiting a vulnerability via a malicious delegate contract under standard 7702. The exploit activates if the user’s private key is already compromised.
The attack works as follows: the attacker deploys a delegate contract on the victim’s address, intercepting control. As soon as ETH or tokens, including WLFI, are received, they are automatically redirected to the hacker’s address.
Users are forced to try to manually withdraw funds faster than bots, but usually fail. Sometimes losses affect all assets in the wallet, including ETH used for gas.
Other Trump Family Assets in Crypto
In addition to WLFI, entities linked to the Trumps own about 80% of the TRUMP memecoin supply and more than half of the shares in the public company Trump Media, which runs the Truth Social platform and invests in cryptocurrencies. The combined market capitalization of these assets reaches several billion dollars.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the president and his family have never and will never enter into a conflict of interest.”
Meanwhile, critics of the World Liberty project link the token’s growth to the involvement of stakeholders, including Binance, whose leadership previously sought a presidential pardon. A separate World Liberty stablecoin, USD1, according to WSJ, remains in circulation largely due to Binance’s participation.
Cashout Risks and Market Volatility
Although WLFI holders have made multibillion-dollar paper gains, selling large volumes of tokens without crashing the price will be difficult. Moreover, the project allows early investors to use only 20% of their tokens at launch. Given crypto market volatility, actual profits may differ significantly from theoretical values. TRUMP, launched in January, initially surged but later lost most of its value.
Lorenzo Protocol co-founder Tad Tobar, who collaborates with World Liberty, said he plans to hold WLFI as a long-term investment asset with voting rights inside the protocol. According to him, WLFI is “designed as a governance token for a new open economy” and is not a memecoin.
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