Most recently, the Trump family announced the launch of World Liberty’s DeFi platform and native WLFI token, where they shared details of the distribution, overall structure, and key participants.
Today, we see different opinions starting to emerge, and some show skepticism regarding the upcoming DeFi project along with an appearance at X Monday night in a live Spaces forum.
More specifically, key figures Chase Herro and Zak Folkman have already had a bad experience with the DeFi project Dough Finance, which was forced to shut down in 2021.
Also, the token distribution and access create questions as to how much it solves the problems of the ordinary, “de-banked” people, seemingly creating prime access for the rich and thus breaking the message of the whole project.
Details on World Liberty Skepticism
Donald Trump remains the preferred presidential candidate for the crypto community, but his attempt to launch a cryptocurrency project with his family has sparked skepticism.
On Monday night, Trump and his sons Don Jr, Eric, and Barron presented a decentralized lending platform called World Liberty Financial live via X, and 1.3 million people tuned in to hear the spaces at various times.
Trump family said again that the goal of the platform is to democratize and depoliticize the financial system by providing loans to people who are denied access to traditional banking services or those who have been “debanked.”
However, one of the most fundamental contradictions was that access to the platform’s management tokens would be restricted to accredited investors only. In turn, this calls into question the very original goal of the project, which is designed to democratize finance and, above all, to help those who have also been “de-banked” and need alternative financial instruments. But under this system, it looks like wealthy people will have much more influence on the project, which is not much different from the current financial system state.
Crypto YouTuber Wendy Oh said:
“It’s not for retail, so it ruins the message it wants to promote.”
Also, Don Jr. called the event the beginning of a “financial revolution,” but, other details about the project have been very limited, angering seasoned crypto-enthusiasts.
Wayne Vaughn, CEO of blockchain company Tierion, noted in a post on X that in the two hours of airtime, it was not revealed how the platform would work:
“We’re over two hours into this Trump crypto call, and they haven’t yet spoken about what the platform does. Noting that the listener count fell from 150,000 to 47,000 as the call went on.”
Among those on the call were billionaire and longtime Trump friend Steve Witkoff and his son Zach, the project’s founder. Also on the call were traders Chase Herro and Zach Folkman, who were previously associated with DeFi’s project, Dough Finance, which disbanded in 2021 after a hacking attack that took $1.8M.
Expectations about 18-year-old Barron Trump’s role in the project also haven’t been presented. Although he was positioned as a crypto-enthusiast, he did not make an appearance on the show despite speculation about his involvement. Moreover, rumors of him collaborating with Martin Shkreli, aka Pharma Bro, and launching a meme coin turned out to be unfounded.
Conclusion
We will look carefully at the next steps of the project, but the comments from various sides are fair enough and it can’t be called a smooth start. To create the financial revolution, this project must be thorough and consistent, and its means must be in line with its goals.
Let’s hope that these are not just loud statements needed for the election race, and in fact, very hard work is being done to make the real solution match all the statements, solving real problems.
