Trump family’s new crypto value slumps in first week, but it has lifted their wealth by billions
Despite lukewarm trading, Monday’s launch has reportedly helped grow the family’s wealth by as much as $5 billion
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Trump Inc.’s World Liberty Financial crypto project has slumped in value since launching at the start of this week.
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The $WLFI token, which was founded by Eric and Donald Trump Jr. with their father named as “co-founder emeritus," launched at the start of this week and hit a peak of about $0.31. But it has fallen about 28% since then, valued at about $0.22 on Wednesday, according to crypto data firm CoinGecko.
World Liberty Financial was set up in October 2024 and created 100 billion tokens. It said that it sold a quarter of those for $550 million, but they were not tradable. Holders could use them to vote on corporate plans at the group. Then, this summer, a vote passed to make them tradable.
Early investors in the World Liberty tokens have been allowed sell up to 20% of their holdings, leaving the total market value of the cryptocurrency at about $5.45 billion on Sept. 3, per CoinGecko. Crypto exchanges including Binance, OKX and Bybit, offer trading of the tokens on their platforms.
WLFI is the latest way that the Trump family has tried to profit from the digital assets industry, which President Donald Trump has promoted since taking office through crypto-friendly legislation and a promise that the U.S. will hold a strategic reserve of Bitcoin.
Trump Jr. wrote on X: “This isn’t some memecoin, it’s the governance backbone of a real ecosystem changing how money moves. Freedom + finance + America FIRST.”
The president and his family are set to receive about 75% of net revenue from the project, according to CNBC reports, which cited a document published by the company. The Wall Street Journal reported that Monday’s launch helped grow the family’s wealth by as much as $5 billion.
U.S. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters wrote in an April letter that the Trumps’ “financial stake in World Liberty Financial represents an unprecedented conflict of interest." They said it created “an obvious incentive” for the Trump administration to push regulators to take crypto-friendly positions.
The White House has said Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children, denying any conflict of interest.
“The WLFI launch has been a tremendous success,” said a World Liberty Financial spokesperson.
Despite the lukewarm opening days of trading, the project has one major backer: Justin Sun, a crypto billionaire, who has invested $75mn in World Liberty Financial. Sun has said he has “no plans to sell our unlocked tokens anytime soon."
Sun founded a blockchain company called Tron. He also bought a banana — a piece of conceptual art — for $6 million last year in New York, before eating it on camera.