Trump-backed World Liberty Financial courts crypto teams for token swaps
$10 million plus interest is said to be the going rate for World Liberty Financial to buy a crypto project’s tokens
Chip Somodevilla/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
World Liberty Financial, the crypto platform backed by President Donald Trump, has been courting blockchains to take part in “token swap” deals, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Blockworks.
Representatives for World Liberty Financial have been approaching blockchain teams with an offer: buy at least $10 million worth of unlaunched WLFI tokens with a 10 percent fee, and World Liberty Financial will buy the same amount of the blockchain’s native token.
A message from a World Liberty Financial representative shared with Blockworks said the WLFI tokens would be transferred at a $1.5 billion fully diluted valuation, which is crypto verbiage for the theoretical total value of a given crypto token.
The World Liberty Financial platform is expected to launch in Q3 of this year at a $1.5 billion FDV, the representative’s message said. The message insisted that none of the tokens could be subject to a vesting period, and the minimum buy in for a token swap partnership was set at $10 million.
A source at a second blockchain project, granted anonymity to discuss private business dealings, confirmed to Blockworks that they had received the same offer with the caveat that while $10 million was the minimum buy in, it would take $15 million to receive priority treatment from World Liberty Financial.
World Liberty Financial will aim to help users access third-party DeFi applications to do things like earn yield on stablecoins or borrow cryptoassets, according to the project’s official documentation. President Trump began promoting the project while still on the campaign trail last year.
Right now, the only thing users can do on World Liberty Financial’s website is buy the forthcoming WLFI token. According to the website, roughly 24 billion WLFI tokens have been sold at $0.05 apiece, which would total some $1.2 billion.
Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun claimed that TronDAO has snapped up $75 million.
Only President Trump’s son Eric, who is on the project’s “board of managers,” is directly involved with World Liberty Financial, but the Trump family has financial upside nonetheless.
An LLC affiliated with President Trump and his family is entitled to 60% of the project’s equity, 75% of the fee revenue generated by the WLFI token sale, and 22.5 billion WLFI tokens, worth some $1.1 billion at the public sale price.
World Liberty Financial’s crypto wallet is public. ETH accounts for about half of the project’s $378 million in crypto, data from Arkham shows. The rest of the holdings include Justin Sun-linked wrapped bitcoin, staked ether, and USDC, as well as a smattering of smaller tokens.
Scoring a spot on World Liberty Financial’s balance sheet has become a point of pride for crypto projects.
“[We] would like to thank @worldlibertyfi for their continued support and look forward to an [American] future for MOVE,” Movement Labs co-founder Rushi Manche wrote on X after World Liberty Financial acquired $2 million in its native token.
“Movement has not purchased any WLFI tokens or engaged with WLF,” a Movement Labs spokesperson told Blockworks.
The message shared with Blockworks says token swap candidates will participate in an initial meeting followed by a video meeting with World Liberty Financial co-founder Zak Folkman to finalize the deal.
Folkman and fellow World Liberty Financial co-founder Chase Herro previously built Dough Finance, a crypto platform that was hacked for $2 million in July 2024, CoinDesk previously reported. The pair launched World Liberty Financial alongside real estate magnate and Trump associate Steve Witkoff.
Folkman, Herro and World Liberty Financial did not return direct messages sent to multiple social media accounts seeking comment.
World Liberty Financial’s token swap deal is currently running on a “first come first serve” basis, the message notes, although the Trump-backed platform is “prioritizing projects with the strongest technical metrics, mindshare, [and] willingness to do larger tickets than USD $10M.”
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