Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump officially unveiled his long-anticipated cryptocurrency project, World Liberty Financial, on Monday night.
“We’re embracing the future with cryptocurrency and leaving the big, slow, outdated banks behind,” President Trump said in a recent promotional video.
In a livestream hosted by crypto personality Farok on social media platform X, Trump said his NFT project opened his eyes to the crypto world. The livestream lasted over two hours.
“I was really surprised at how many people were paying this way,” said Trump, whose NFT collection has earned more than $7 million. “To be honest, I wasn’t really interested[at first]… but I was surprised at how much money there was.”
In his opening remarks, Trump said cryptocurrencies were “big, but still in their infancy compared to what they’re going to be.” “I think my kids have opened my eyes,” he said.
DeFi and WLFI Tokens
Donald Trump Jr. and Steve, a wealthy real estate investor Jack Witkoff He spoke about the need for disruption in the lending markets. “This is the beginning of a financial revolution,” Trump Jr. said.
Dough Finance co-founders Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, along with Eric Trump, took over to discuss more about why they founded World Liberty Financial.
“Take advantage of DeFi and apply it to your daily life,” Folkman said. He then said: World Liberty Financial will be selling a non-transferable governance token called WLFI. Due to regulatory uncertainty, WLFI plans to limit participation to accredited investors.
The WLFI tokens will be distributed as follows: 63% will be sold to the public, 17% will be used as user rewards, and 20% will be used as team rewards, Folkman said.
DeFi allows users around the world to earn yields on stablecoins like USDC and USDT by providing liquidity to decentralized lending platforms and other applications.
“As credit demand from crypto traders increases, stablecoin DeFi yields could top 5%, potentially outpacing those offered by U.S. dollar money market funds,” The Block’s James Hunt wrote on Monday, citing Bernstein analysts. “That would further ignite crypto credit markets and fuel digital asset prices.”
World Liberty Financial’s Hype Spreads
The project was first teased on August 7 by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who said that announcements on cryptocurrencies and DeFi would be coming soon.“Decentralized finance is the future. Don’t get left behind,” they said at the time.
Stephen Chung of Block Research First mentioned In August, links were discovered between the Trump Project, Hero, and Dow Finance. In July, Dow Finance was hit with a $1.8 million flash loan attack.
On September 3, CoinDesk reported on a white paper being worked on at the workshop, which said the project would be built on Aave, a decentralized finance platform on the Ethereum blockchain, and would center around a “credit account system.”
The project said it aims to promote stablecoin adoption with security as its top priority. Earlier this month, Lara and Tiffany Trump’s X account was hacked and content about tokens believed to be related to World Liberty Financial was posted.
Jaret Seiberg of TD Cowen Washington Research Group said earlier today that World Liberty Financial could be a “serious political problem for the crypto space” if Trump wins the presidential election in November.
“Our concern is that the Trump family’s entry into cryptocurrency business could derail the new bipartisan view on cryptocurrency regulation and thwart efforts to establish a regulatory regime for cryptocurrencies,” Seberg wrote in a memo ahead of Monday’s launch.
Trump’s Cryptocurrency Conversion
Trump’s stance on cryptocurrencies changed in May of this year when his campaign began accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of donation. Since then, he has met with executives from Bitcoin mining companies and said he wants to make the U.S. the “cryptocurrency capital” of the world.
President Trump said on Monday: “There have to be certain safeguards in place, and you can’t be completely free-spirited.”
Trump said in a speech at the Bitcoin 2024 conference earlier this summer that if elected president, he would fire SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and stop the sale of Bitcoin holdings in the United States. He also supported a pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being convicted of founding the dark web marketplace Silk Road.
“If we don’t win this election, those people who are being investigated and now are free as birds and who have not been noticed in the crypto world are going to live in hell because if they win, hell begins the next day,” Trump said Monday night.
According to CNBC, the cryptocurrency industry and companies have donated more than $190 million to candidates and political action committees (PACs) during this election cycle, up from $15 million in 2020.
Bitcoin was trading at $57,800 at the time of publication, down about 1%, according to The Block’s price page. Ether was trading at around $2,280.
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