Trump's crypto website crashes after token sale

Former President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency project, World Liberty Financial, launched its token sale on Tuesday — and its website crashed shortly after.

The whitelist for the much-discussed but still largely unexplained decentralized finance project opened on September 30 to accredited investors and non-US persons. World Liberty Financial co-founder Jack Folkman claimed Monday that “over 100,000 people” have signed up to buy its token WLFI, according to CNBC. As of press time, the site appears to be back online.

However, according to blockchain data tracked by Etherscan, only 5,317 unique wallet addresses held tokens as of Tuesday afternoon, and World Liberty Financial said it had sold more than 532 million tokens out of the 20 billion it made available for public sale.

WLFI advisor Sandy Peng said coindesk That outage resulted in excessive traffic. “The team didn't expect this level of interest,” Peng said, adding that the website received 72 million unique visits in the first hour after the token was launched.

coindesk reports that the WLFI token, which will be non-transferable for the time being, will be used to operate the World Liberty Financial Platform. Holders will be able to have a say in protocol upgrades, technological changes, promotional partnerships and oversight of security risks. The platform itself will allow users to borrow and lend cryptocurrency.

Although Trump and his allies use World Liberty Financial as a promotional tool to help the unbanked and de-banked, only those who meet the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) accredited investor requirements can buy WLFI. To qualify as an accredited investor, an individual must have an income of at least $200,000 (or $300,000 with a spouse) and/or a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding their primary residence.

World Liberty Financial released a so-called “gold paper” about the token on Tuesday, listing Trump as a “major crypto ally.” Three of his sons — Eric, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron — are listed as Web3 ambassadors.

According to the paper, the World Liberty Financial Protocol “plans to provide access to users' data and third-party DeFi applications, including third-party digital wallet providers and non-security digital assets for acquiring, holding and transferring stablecoins.” Notably, the paper states that the tokens are “not available to US persons” and “have not been registered with any US or other authority.”