World Liberty Financial, which Donald Trump has promoted in recent weeks, has filed with the SEC to disclose that it is reducing its fundraising goal from a staggering $300 million to only $30 million, marking a 90% cut from its initial sales target.
“The company currently only plans to sell tokens up to $30M in the offering before terminating sales,” the document stated. The filing was made after the DeFi project failed to make a statement on its first day of token sales.
Token Sale Flops
Since allowing “accredited investors” to purchase tokens two weeks ago, the project has only sold 972.50 million tokens – there are still over 19 billion WLFI tokens up for grabs. Data from Arkham Intelligence shows that the project’s wallet has only received some $14 million in cryptocurrencies from WLFI token buyers.
The weak sales came even after Trump himself promoted the token sale event, saying the DeFi project will reshape the future of finance.
Notably, WLFI’s token sale day was marred by technical difficulties. At some points during the day, the website crashed for extended periods, raising more concerns about the project.
A Protocol That Isn’t Yet
While the exact reasons for underwhelming interest in World Liberty Financial’s governance token have yet to be clarified by the team, trust could be a major cause.
Trump and the WLFI team, which includes Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., have painted the project as a protocol. However, there is no protocol yet, and details about what it will offer remain scant.
There have also been serious questions from crypto users about the code of WLFI that’s said to have a “striking” similarities to the code of Dough Finance, which suffered a $2 million exploit in July.
A ‘Public’ Token Sale That Isn’t
Ahead of the token sale, many crypto users raised issue with the requirements listed by WLFI for buyers. The team did make it clear that only “accredited investors” as defined by the SEC can partake in the token purchase, but crypto users believe it shouldn’t be called a “public” sale because of the requirement.
Some users called out the DeFi project for allegedly weeding out middle class crypto investors who don’t make the cut of having a $1 million net worth.
A Project Without the Right Fundamentals
In discussions on X that tackled the possible reasons for the project’s lackluster performance even with Trump’s backing, blockchain developer Jacob Gadikian said he believes most of the crypto users on X may have already foreseen how WLFI’s fundamentals weren’t there and “therefore not at all surprised that it failed.”
Prominent crypto user TylerD noted how “target and GTM (Go-To-Market) strategy are pretty telling signs of a team’s competence,” suggesting that the development team may have contributed to growing concerns about the project.
Angel investor Johnny Utah agreed, saying initial details about WLFI “sounded like a money grab” and “this was not an elite dev[eloper] team.”
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