Home Donald Trump’s crypto project World Liberty Financial suffers issues during token sale launch

Donald Trump’s crypto project World Liberty Financial suffers issues during token sale launch

TLDR

  • Trump's crypto project faced website outages during its token sale, affecting user access and sales.
  • Only 4,300 wallets held tokens after launch, far below the 100,000 people who pre-registered.
  • Despite issues, the platform sold 532M tokens, less than 3% of the 20B offered for public sale.

Donald Trump’s new crypto project reportedly faced major issues after the launch of its token sale on Tuesday (Oct. 16). The sale, hosted by World Liberty Financial—a company aiming to become a crypto-focused bank—experienced frequent and prolonged website outages throughout the morning and early afternoon.

The project’s co-founder, Zachary Folkman had said “well over 100,000 people” were on the whitelist to invest ahead of the launch.

The technical problems limited the number of sales, with only around 4,300 unique wallet addresses holding the token by Tuesday afternoon, according to blockchain data from Etherscan. This equates to roughly 4% of the total number of people who registered to buy the coin.

The platform reports that it has sold over 532 million tokens for 15 cents per token, which represents less than 3% of the 20 billion tokens offered for public sale. At the time of writing, this increased to around 8,300 holders.

However, over the day, the website continually showed a page saying, “We are under maintenance.”

Trump said in a video on X: “The World Liberty financial token sale is now live. Crypto is the future. Let’s embrace this incredible technology and lead the world in digital economy.”

Trump’s World Liberty Financial project

The problematic launch could be a setback for the Republican presidential nominee, with only three weeks remaining until the election. ReadWrite has been covering the project, which was branded “The DeFiant Ones.” The trademark for ‘World Liberty Financial’ is described as being for “providing financial information in the field of decentralized finance (DeFi).”

The former president’s son Donald Trump Jr first shared news about the project on August 15 through a post on X. He described it as being ‘our’ crypto project.

On August 21, the Republican presidential candidate’s other son Eric took to X to say: “Almost ready to make some big announcements regarding the Crypto project… Getting very excited. Make sure you are in our Telegram group…”

Featured image: Ideogram

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The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

Suswati Basu
Tech journalist

Suswati Basu is a multilingual, award-winning editor and the founder of the intersectional literature channel, How To Be Books. She was shortlisted for the Guardian Mary Stott Prize and longlisted for the Guardian International Development Journalism Award. With 18 years of experience in the media industry, Suswati has held significant roles such as head of audience and deputy editor for NationalWorld news, digital editor for Channel 4 News and ITV News. She has also contributed to the Guardian and received training at the BBC As an audience, trends, and SEO specialist, she has participated in panel events alongside Google. Her…

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