The Trump family saw a rapid paper gain Monday after trading for the Ethereum-based WLFI token went live, briefly lifting their collective net worth by almost $6 billion.
World Liberty Financial — the decentralized finance project founded by President Donald Trump and family members — disclosed that an entity affiliated with the family holds 22.5 billion WLFI tokens. At the token’s opening market price the holding was valued at roughly $5.96 billion.
Those headline numbers come with important caveats. While trading has begun, World Liberty says 33.5 billion WLFI tokens reserved for team members are not yet circulating and remain locked under a vesting arrangement that the project says is still TBD. The timeline and terms for unlocking those tokens have not been published.
About 24.7 billion WLFI tokens are currently in circulation out of a total supply of 100 billion, giving the project a fully diluted valuation above $26 billion at current prices — despite the platform itself not having launched its core DeFi product. WLFI was initially sold to early investors at $0.015 and later at $0.05 during public rounds that raised roughly $500 million.
Why it matters: the market-priced windfall illustrates how token listings can produce fast, large paper gains for founders, even when underlying products are incomplete and token unlock schedules remain unclear. Investors should note the risk that future vesting or large token distributions could put downward pressure on price once tokens become transferable.
Source: Decrypt. Read the original coverage for full details.