The financial company World Liberty Financial, which has close ties to US President Donald Trump’s family, has released another cryptocurrency for trading in the form of $WLFI, but its value quickly plummeted. This is according to data from CoinMarketCap, which shows that the token briefly traded for almost USD 0.4 before falling to USD 0.23 recently. Nevertheless, this means that the market value of $WLFI is now around 6 billion US dollars, meaning that Donald Trump’s shares alone are worth more than 3.6 billion US dollars, reports the Financial Times.
Already several cryptocurrencies of the Trump family
World Liberty Financial has been around since last fall and several of the current US president’s sons hold high positions in the company. With USD1, it has already brought a so-called stablecoin into circulation, which currently has a market value of around 2.7 billion US dollars. The $WLFI, on the other hand, were not initially freely traded, and their ownership is linked to certain rights in decisions on the business activities of World Liberty Financial. The company only monetized a portion of them immediately after their introduction; according to the news agency Reuters, Trump’s family has so far made around 500 million US dollars from them. In June, it was then decided to unblock the trade – and this has now happened.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the launch of the $WLFI trade was almost certainly the biggest financial success for the Trump family since Donald Trump returned to office in January. And this inauguration was accompanied by the release of two memecoins, one by Trump himself and one by his wife Melania. According to CoinMarketCap, $WLFI is currently one of the 30 largest cryptocurrencies of all, with USD1 in 42nd place. $TRUMP is still in 56th place in this ranking in terms of market value, with a current market value of just over 200 million US dollars. However, this is a far cry from the approximately 13 billion US dollars that the cryptocurrency reached immediately after its launch.
Donald Trump and his family’s handling of cryptocurrency has long been the subject of massive criticism, particularly from some opposition Democrats. When USD1 became a billion-dollar investment in the spring, US Senator Elizabeth Warren called it corruption. When Trump promoted the $TRUMP with an “intimate private dinner”, her colleague Chris Murphy called it ” the most brazen and corrupt thing any president has ever done”. Donald Trump was a fierce critic of cryptocurrencies during his first term as US president, but changed his mind during the election campaign last year. In return, his election campaign received millions in donations from the industry.
(mho)