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Former president and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is launching a crypto coin tomorrow, but the cryptocurrency is significantly different from many others in the crypto market.
Trump will be offering a token for World Liberty Financial (WLFI), which is a decentralized finance platform.
The waitlist opens tomorrow at 8 a.m. ET in what Trump has pledged to be his first step to “make America the crypto capital of the world.”
“I promised to Make America Great Again, this time with crypto,” Trump wrote on X last month. “@WorldLibertyFi is planning to help make America the crypto capital of the world! The whitelist for eligible persons is officially open—this is your chance to be part of this historic moment.”
WLFI works as a money market for people to borrow, lend and earn interest on their cryptocurrencies. In the process, the platform has removed financial intermediaries for users.
Users will also be able to get a token that ensures they have voting rights over WLFI.
“This is more than just a financial venture,” Ryan Waite, a political marketing expert and the VP of Public Affairs at Think Big, told Newsweek.
“It partially represents a larger political statement aimed at rallying supporters to engage with the Trump movement while participating in the emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) space. The WLF token is being promoted as an opportunity for supporters to ‘shape the future of finance,’ emphasizing financial autonomy and conservative values.”
How is WLFI Different from Bitcoin?
While bitcoin might be the most common type of crypto known to most Americans, Trump’s new crypto coin differs in several ways.
“Whereas bitcoin is primarily a decentralized digital currency and a store of value, the WLF token operates within a larger DeFi platform and has elements of governance, utility, and political messaging,” Waite said. “It’s intended to serve as both an investment vehicle and a utility token, empowering its holders to participate in borrowing, lending, and governance within the World Liberty Financial ecosystem.”
While most crypto can be traded, the WLFI coin will be non-transferable and non-yielding. Additionally, a majority of the WLFI coin will be for accredited investors, with 63 percent of the token supply reserved for this group.
That’s specifically available to those who have a net worth of $1 million or more or otherwise meet the accredited investor threshold.
So far, more than 100,000 accredited American investors have been whitelisted for the project.
From the WLFI sale, Trump anticipates making $300 million for the company, which would give it an overall business value of $1.5 billion.
Trump’s upcoming launch has been met with some concerns over how the platform could potentially violate the Constitution. If foreign governments are able to use the platform, it could potentially create a conflict of interest under a second Trump presidency.
“Anyone who thinks this is good for crypto, that it doesn’t make us look like clowns, that it doesn’t set us back YEARS in credibility…. This is such an obvious pump scheme. Maybe he won’t literally rug but he’s just grifting and it’s pathetic,” Alex Miller, a crypto expert and the CEO of Hiro Systems, wrote on X upon hearing of Trump’s launch.
The specific requirements for the majority of the crypto holders being accredited investors also have many complaining about the elitist nature of the project.
“I wish I could qualify on the whitelist!…. Once again middle class is weeded out!” @PharmD999 wrote on X.
Trump’s Crypto Views
While Trump might be embracing crypto as the way of the future now, the former president used to be against the digital payment system.
After meeting with major Bitcoin players at his Mar-a-Lago home in June, Trump urged crypto investors to vote for him, saying he would counteract “Biden’s hatred of Bitcoin.”
That was a far cry from Trump’s perspective on crypto during his time in the White House.
“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” Trump wrote on social media in 2019. “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”
“We have only one real currency in the USA,” Trump also said. “And it will always stay that way. It is called the United States Dollar!”
Trump also previously told Fox Business that bitcoin “just seems like a scam.”
Waite said Trump’s changing perspective could reflect the shifting views of his own voter base.
“This turnaround seems partly driven by the growing popularity of crypto, especially among segments of his support base who see digital assets as a means to circumvent centralized financial control,” Waite said.
Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, said the new crypto coin appears as more of a market Trump felt he “had” to expand into, rather than outright passion for the project.
“Trump’s expansion into cryptocurrency isn’t puzzling in the sense of it being yet another venture to add to his expanding empire, but some of the concepts behind this currency when compared to others is starkly different,” Beene told Newsweek.
“It seems like through Trump’s own comments, he’s not fully into the idea, but rather feels it’s a market they ‘had to’ expand into. The whole crypto industry is built on shaky ground, and this new endeavor is no different. If anything, it could actually face more scrutiny if Trump wins reelection.”
In the latest NBC News poll, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris were neck and neck, with each candidate earning 48 percent support from the surveyed voter base.