After months of controversy and waiting, WLFI has finally reached a decisive moment.

On August 26, the Trump family's crypto project WLFI announced the launch of the Lockbox page, where holders can move their tokens to prepare for the unlocking process. At 8:00 AM Eastern Time on September 1, WLFI will complete its first release — 20% of the initial token allocation will officially enter circulation.

For this governance token that was once described in the whitepaper as "potentially never tradable," this step almost symbolizes a turning point in the project's narrative: from concept and voting to actual realization, WLFI is completing the transition from a "political symbol" to a "tradable asset."

The Designers Behind WLFI

World Liberty Financial (WLFI) was founded on September 16 last year, guided by real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff and his son Zach, with co-founders including crypto KOL Chase Herro and Zak Folkman.

The Trump family also holds a significant position, with Trump being listed as the "Chief Crypto Advocate," and his sons Eric, Don Jr., and Barron are "Web3 Ambassadors."

In addition, WLFI has three technical leads,

1. Rich Teo: Head of Stablecoin and Payments, previously founded the exchange itBit and the stablecoin company Paxos, currently serving as CEO of Paxos Asia. Additionally, Rich is an advisor to the SocialFi project RepubliK.

2. Corey Caplan: Head of Technical Strategy, co-founder of the DeFi platform Dolomite, responsible for integrating lending and trading functionality.

3. Bogdan Purnavel: Chief Developer, formerly a developer at Dough Finance.

One of World Liberty Financial's initial moves was to sell its own token, with the ICO starting on October 15, 2024, selling 20 billion $WLFI at a price of $0.015, earning the company approximately $300 million.

On January 20, 2025, the day of Trump's inauguration, WLFI announced its second token sale, citing "high demand and strong interest." They issued 5 billion tokens at a price of $0.05, a 230% increase from the initial sale. The second sale was completed on March 14, almost two months later, reaching the full target of $250 million.

According to WLFI's "Gold Paper," the WLFI token will grant holders the right to vote on important protocol matters such as upgrades. In the expected token distribution, 33.893% will be allocated through token sales, 32.6% for incentives and community development, 30% for the "initial supporters" allocation, and 3.5% for the "core team and advisors."

The project whitepaper also states, "Issuance of the $WLFI token raised funds to purchase mainstream project tokens with growth potential, and $WLFI token holders share the portfolio's appreciation." The project whitepaper clearly indicates that the $WLFI purchased by users is only a governance token, with 5.5 billion dollars already belonging to the project.

However, the Trump family's repeated forays into crypto seem to "foreshadow" that WLFI will not merely serve as a "non-transferable authentication" token. Now, with the opening of the Lockbox feature, WLFI's token issuance logic has officially entered the "cash-out phase," and the previously sold 550 billion tokens will gradually be released under the community governance framework.

What is the Geometric Valuation of the WLFI Token?

On August 23, according to the initial unlocking rules released by WLFI, only the token shares of early presale users will be unlocked at the WLFI listing debut. Specifically, 20% of the WLFI purchased per address in rounds priced between $0.015 and $0.05 will be unlocked, while the remaining 80% of the unlocking plan will still be decided by the community through governance voting. The token shares of founders, team, advisors, and partners remain locked and will not be included in the initial unlocking.

The market broadly believes that WLFI's circulation launch is a potential moment for a "price revaluation." The initial 20% unlocking release is a test of market attention and may be a crucial turning point for whether the WLFI market cap can break into a higher range.

If we consider the first-round funding valuation of $15 billion (corresponding to $0.015 per token) and the second-round valuation of $50 billion ($0.05 per token) as the basis, with the current OTC price at $0.24, it means that WLFI's valuation has grown by over 16 times in the past 8 months.

From a horizontal comparison standpoint, the market generally views WLFI as a heavyweight project benchmarked against the TRUMP token. The latter skyrocketed to an $800 billion market cap early on, while WLFI's current initial market cap forecast is close to $300 billion, showing that the market has high expectations for it.

Which Whales Have Bought In?

According to a joint disclosure by Accountable.US and Bloomberg, at least 14 users from WLFI's top 50 addresses hold over 6.7 billion WLFI tokens (worth approximately $335 million) through a US-restricted exchange. The most prominent holder is undoubtedly Justin Sun.

In November 2024, Justin Sun's TRON DAO became the largest independent investor in World Liberty Financial (WLFI), subscribing $30 million to acquire up to 3 billion WLFI tokens. Insiders revealed that the transaction price was significantly lower than the market's expected $0.015 issuance price at that time, with an actual executed price of $0.01, meaning Sun Yuchen entered the project with a hefty discount of around 40%. This price not only secured him early investment benefits but also established his core position in the WLFI project.

Subsequently, WLFI officially announced on November 27, 2024, that Justin Sun had joined the project as an advisor, although Justin's introduction was not found on the WLFI website.

Aqua1 Fund

On June 26, Web3-native fund Aqua1 announced a strategic purchase of $100 million of Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial governance token WLFI, aiming to participate in the decentralized finance platform's governance and accelerate the development of the blockchain finance ecosystem. According to on-chain data, the Aqua1 Fund holds 800,000,000 WLFI tokens.

Additionally, Aqua1 plans to establish an Aqua Fund in the Middle East and collaborate with WLFI to jointly incubate the RWA tokenization platform, BlockRock.

DWF Labs

In April 2025, Abu Dhabi-based crypto investment and market-making institution DWF Labs announced a $25 million investment in tokens issued by World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a crypto project controlled by the Trump family.

Mike Dudas

Mike Dudas, founder of 6th Man Ventures and The Block, purchased over $145,000 worth of WLFI tokens on January 20, 2025, on the eve of Trump's inauguration. This amounted to approximately 970,000 WLFI tokens.

Troy Murray

BarnBridge DAO member Troy Murray purchased around 666,000 WLFI tokens.

Sigil Fund (Alias Fiskantes)

The fund based in Gibraltar, whose Chief Investment Officer goes by the alias "Fiskantes," spent 40 Ethereum (about $130,000) to purchase WLFI tokens, roughly equivalent to 400,000 WLFI tokens based on the WLFI issuance price.

From a "non-tradable" governance token to asset circulation upon Lockbox unlock; from a "Presidential Ambassador" to on-chain holdings; from a stablecoin financing tool to an international investment matchmaking platform, WLFI presents an unusually intriguing narrative—where politics and financial power converge through cryptocurrency. The initial unlock on September 1st will mark the starting point for WLFI's entry into the real market game, serving as a crucial moment to test whether the "political-financial-crypto" triple narrative can be realized.

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