Trump Inc.’s $5.4 Billion Digital Coin Hit by Market Turbulence.
Trump Inc.’s much-trumpeted crypto foray — the WLFI token — launched Monday with ambitions of serving as the backbone of a new digital ecosystem. Within hours, it was mired in the turbulence and instability that has long been the hallmarks of crypto trading.
The token, promoted by Donald Trump’s family and listed this week on leading exchanges Binance and Coinbase, is still changing hands about 25% below its launch price, and has a market value of around $5.4 billion. The stumble followed a late disclosure that nearly 25 billion WLFI coins would circulate — far more than investors had expected — rattling confidence in the cryptocurrency.
It’s common for tokens to slide on their first day of trading as early holders take profits, though expectations for this high-profile debut had been lofty. World Liberty Financial Inc. — co-founded by Eric and Donald Trump Jr., with their father listed as “co-founder emeritus” — is the decentralized finance company that issued WLFI token. Just before launch, the firm announced 25 billion tokens would be circulating, about five times the roughly 5 billion many investors had expected, with most of the 100 billion total supply still not tradable, and a lot of it held by insiders. Directly or indirectly, the Trump family controls more than 20 billion WLFI tokens.
The disclosure showed billions of tokens would go to Alt5 Sigma Corp., a publicly traded crypto-payments firm that’s affiliated with many principals involved in World Liberty. Alt5 recently agreeing to hold about 7.5% of WLFI’s total supply and raised $1.5 billion. Its board was recast to include World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff as chairman and Eric Trump as director.
Alt5’s shares dropped 29% on Tuesday, to $5.58 apiece, underscoring how closely the firm’s fortunes are now tied to WLFI. Though the tokens it received are tradable, the company has said its aim is to accumulate rather than sell. The shares fell another 16% on Wednesday.
Source: Finance.yahoo