Trump's crypto project raised $10 million in one day

Written by: Gyro Finance

Trump, a new trick.

On October 15, the Trump family DeFi project World Liberty Financial Token WLFI is officially on sale, but before that, the project team had already carried out a promotional campaign for nearly two months, with all four members of the Trump family participating. Trump himself has also made appearances on Space and X many times, and has become the new generation of encryption spokesperson.

But compared to its ambitious fundraising goal of nearly $300 million, the first dayTokenSales were only over 10 million, and the target is still far away. The market has become desensitized to promises made without authorization, which has led to a trend of shrinking bets on Trump, not to mention that the project has previously been controversial for nepotism.

On the other hand, with 20 days left before the election, the precise appearance of encryption projects at this time seems to have a different meaning.

On October 15, the World Liberty Financial token WLFI was officially launched and opened for public sale to whitelisted users. Just one day ago, the project team live broadcast an introduction, saying that there were more than 100,000 eligible whitelisted users.

Looking back at the development of the project, the preheating had already begun as early as two months ago. First, Trump's second son Eric Trump suddenly expressed his love for Defi, and then the eldest son Donald Trump Jr. posted a message saying that Defi is the future to show his loyalty. On August 16, the eldest son opened a Telegram channel The DeFiant Ones for the encryption project, and continued to announce it in the subsequent period, which greatly whetted the market's appetite.

Finally, on August 29, the project unveiled its hazy veil, and Eric Trump announced the launch of World Liberty Financial (WLFI). Important guest Trump naturally added fuel to the fire, released videos related to the project, and mentioned the slogan of the US crypto capital again.

Although it claims to return the power of finance to the people, in fact, even until the token is released today, the official white paper of the project has not yet appeared, and there is only a "golden paper" to introduce it. The specific technical details and operation methods are unknown. According to the roadmap obtained by The Block and the integration of the golden paper, we can get a brief glimpse of the project.

World Liberty Financial, led by co-founders Steve and Zach Witkoff, Folkman and Chase Herro, aims to drive mass adoption of digital assets through a compliant, one-stop alternative finance platform where users can borrow and lendcryptocurrency, creating liquidity pools and using stablecoins for transactions. The Trump family is deeply involved in the project, and Trump is referred to as the "Chief Executive Officer" in the draft white paper.cryptocurrencyTrump’s two eldest sons serve as “Web3 Ambassadors”, and the youngest son naturally serves as the so-called “DeFi Visionary”.

The roadmap shows that the project is divided into three phases. The first phase is to build on Scroll based on the Ethereum lending platform Aave, focusing on crypto banking, and this part of the plan has already started. The second phase is to work withexchangeIntegration allows users to consume through on-chain proof of KYC protocol. Specifically, the project plans to create a credit card focused on stablecoins. The final stage is to segment real-world assets, that is, return to the old business, and there may be tokenization of real estate projects.

Although the project's plans are vague, the token distribution is quite clear. 63% of the token supply will be sold to the public, of which 17% will be used for user rewards and 20% for the team. The initial token sale will seek to raise $300 million, and it will sell 20% of the token supply at a fully diluted valuation of $1.5 billion, with a total of 20 billion tokens.In order to circumvent SEC supervision, the project token sale adopted Regulation D regulations, which limits the sales scale and only sells to qualified investors. Tokens cannot be transferred for the second time, but token holders retain governance voting rights for project development.

Judging from the first day of sales, as of 15:30 on October 16, about 730.53 million WLFI tokens have been sold, and the remaining number of tokens is 19.269 billion. Calculated at $0.015 per token, the sales amount is about $10.9579 million.For a brand new project, the first-day fundraising results are impressive, but if compared with the original 300 million plan of the project, it is far from enough.

As for why the market is no longer buying into it, the reason is quite direct. For a project whose tokens cannot be transferred and whose white paper is unclear, it is risky to spend a lot of money. On the other hand, the project itself has many flaws.

First of all, the project team. Although the Trump family is fully involved, as a traditional real estate giant, they obviously have no experience in cryptocurrencies. From the titles in the white paper, it can be seen that they are mostly mascots, increasing their influence and waiting to collect money. In this context, the actual project operation and management naturally fell on Lianchuang.

Among the co-founders, Folkman and Chase Herro both came from Dough Finance.Xiaobai NavigationThe project was a DeFi project based on AAVE established in April this year, but it was attacked by a flash loan transaction on July 12.stealWith this as a previous record, there are also rumors in the market that WLFI will directly apply the code, which will bringSafetyRisk. And Folkman himself, because of his experience in teaching courses to attract beautiful women for dates, has greatly reduced the market's trust and professionalism in him.

Chase Herro's reputation is no less impressive. He was sentenced to prison for long-term drug-related crimes when he was young. He has sold weight loss pills and get-rich-quick courses. Ten years ago, he launched another crypto trading business called Pacer Capital, which no longer exists.

The reputation of the actual operator collapsed, the Trump family knew nothing about encryption, and the tokens were non-transferable and only used for governance purposes. The purpose of establishing the project was soon questioned.

Some industry analysts believe that the project is merely a way for Trump to expand his fundraising channels, and more specifically, an alternative way to make political donations.This statement is not groundless. Compared with the Democratic Party, which has always had more funds, the Republican Party has encountered difficulties in raising funds. According to the Federal Election Commission documents, as of July 31, Harris's team raised a total of US$770 million and spent US$440 million, while Trump's team raised a total of US$570 million and spent US$310 million. According to the latest data, in the three months from July 1 to September 30, Harris's team has raised US$633 million, a large amount and a fast speed that is rare even in elections. During the same period, Trump only raised US$350 million in the third quarter, and the gap between the two is huge.

From the perspective of funding channels, Harris's external fund-raising channels are mainly through Carey Committee, while Trump's are mainly through SuperPAC. Although both have unlimited financial donations, the former can add an additional "direct donation" function, that is, the amount can be donated directly to candidates and political parties, but the latter can only be used for unlimited expenses such as advertising and publicity, and the funding efficiency is lower than that of Harris' team.

Based on the above reasons,It is quite reasonable for Trump to suddenly increase the secret channel on the eve of the election. The token sale itself is a way to make quick money, which does not match the high amount of financing of 300 million US dollars that the project intends to obtain. After all, not every project dares to open up 3 small goals just after the token is launched on sale, and it is still based on the governance token.Of course, this also means that the success or failure of the project is closely related to Trump’s election, and the subsequent benefits obtained are more important to donors, but from the current perspective, the Trump family still has high hopes for the project and has also set its sights on stablecoins, a crypto cash cow.

On the other hand, Trump's launch of the encryption project at this time has further strengthened his own encryption inclination. Reflected in reality, it has added more authenticity to Trump's nonsense statements, which is conducive to gaining key support in the encryption field.

Because of this, projects with a slightly political color are not widely respected. But in terms of winning rate, although as of October 10, Harris still leads Trump by 2 percentage points in the polls with a winning rate of 49%, according to the crypto prediction market, Trump has already overtaken Harris by 17 percentage points with a winning rate of 58.9%. In key swing states, Trump has also regained his lead. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada have all surpassed Harris. He is leading in 6 of the 7 swing states. If this situation is deduced, Trump may be only one step away from winning the election.

It is worth noting that in this campaign, a very key Trump supporter is an old friend of crypto - Elon Musk. It is reported that between July 3 and September 5, Elon Musk donated $75 million to the America PAC, which supports Trump. Although it is lower than the previously announced monthly donation of $45 million, this amount also makes him one of Trump's largest donors.

But what is quite strange is that before 2020, Musk was very dissatisfied with Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and publicly stated that he was a supporter of the Democratic Party. In 2022, the two were the targets of online trolling, and Musk bluntly stated in public that Trump should retire. In response, Trump said that Musk was just a "businessman who relies on government subsidies" and used very spicy language to ridicule Musk's previous behavior of coming to the White House to seek project subsidies.

After Trump was assassinated in July this year, the two suddenly reversed their attitudes and turned enemies into friends. In August, Musk and Trump had a conversation on Space, which was intended to promote him and attracted millions of people to watch online. In October, Musk even appeared at Trump's campaign site to support him and even publicly spent money to buy votes, saying that he would give $47 for each vote. Coupled with the high donation, Musk can be said to be fully supportive.

As for the reason why the two sides turned their hostility into friendship, according to Musk himself, he supports Trump because the current Democratic Party’s political views and values are inconsistent with his own. Musk believes that the Democratic Party’s laissez-faire racial diversity has accelerated the division of the United States. The subsequent Biden administration’s lack of strength in clean energy and automobile electrification, as well as its various attacks on SpaceX and Twitter, have also strengthened his determination to stand with the Republican Party.

On the other hand, in addition to the pressure from government orders and regulatory direction, Musk himself seems to have a strong interest in politics. From this point of view, choosing Trump, who has not yet fully established his political foundation and is far away from the core of the already solid bureaucratic establishment, obviously meets Musk's conditions more in terms of business interests and political prospects. At present, Trump has changed his previous attitude and promised to support electric vehicles. He also said that after he takes office, Musk can serve as the minister of cost reduction.

But once the arrow is shot, there is no turning back. Publicly standing up for public figures naturally means huge risks and backlash. Musk once publicly mentioned that if Trump loses the election, he may face strong retaliation from the Democratic Party, or even personal injury.SafetyIn this context, in order to ensureSafety, Musk’s strong support seems particularly normal.

For anyone involved in politics, the election is a gamble, and it is hard to tell who will win until the end. The verbal battles between the campaign parties are just appetizers, and the bloodless struggles behind the scenes are the real stage. Any action of politicians is based on interests and votes.

Musk's friendship is like this, and the creation of crypto projects is no different. As for whether the Defi project World Liberty Financial launched this time can truly serve crypto in the future, the answer may be that no one cares.

The article comes from the Internet:Trump's crypto project raised $10 million in one day

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