Trump fans bought $550 million of WLFI tokens.
They’re still unable to trade the majority of them.
The project’s creators hold the sole power to decide who can sell and when.
World Liberty Financial’s creators, which include US President Donald Trump and his sons Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron, granted themselves the sole power to decide who can sell and when.
The project has so far released 20% of the tokens and has promised a vote among holders on when the rest will be made available for trading.
But months have passed, and that vote hasn’t materialised.
Now, dozens of token holders are taking to the World Liberty Financial forum, begging the protocol’s creators to let them cash out as they watch WLFI’s value evaporate.
The token has fallen some 54% over the past five months.
“Nearly 80% of WLFI presale tokens are still locked after almost two years,” said one WLFI holder.
“We held through volatility and silence because we believed. But at what point does patience turn into neglect?”
“They are my investments and I want to have access to them,” said another.
We have become hostages.
The pleas have so far been ignored.
To add to their holders’ woes, World Liberty’s creators pushed through a proposal to distribute WLFI as incentives to encourage more people to use the protocol, potentially putting more pressure on the token’s price.
A World Liberty Financial spokesperson told DL News the protocol’s team is in frequent and regular contact with its global community.
The industry, which is still largely unregulated, has become a playground for fly-by-night crypto peddlers who promise big, raise millions of dollars, then leave those who bought in out to dry.
Risk-tolerant crypto investors, often lured in by the promise of huge returns, pile into such projects without fully understanding what they are getting into.
Among them is Chase Herro, a former “get-rich-quick” class instructor who has referred to himself as the “dirtbag of the internet.”
In a since-deleted YouTube video, Herro said: “You can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story’s right, because people will buy it.”
When Herro founded World Liberty Financial in 2024 along with an all-star cast of Trump allies — including US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and his sons, Zach and Alex, and long-time business partner Zachary Folkman — they made no promises.
Buried in the protocol’s so-called gold paper, essentially a long-form marketing pitch, are important details about how the project is set up.
The World Liberty Financial protocol is not directly controlled by WLFI token holders.
This has potentially confused token buyers, as other protocols which issue governance tokens do give holders control over the protocol.
The impact is that while token holders can create and propose changes, the protocol’s co-founders screen proposals before voting and reserve the right to block them at their sole discretion.
Additionally, WLFI tokens provide no right to any return, dividend, airdrop or other distribution from the protocol, and there is no guarantee that tokens beyond the initial 20% will ever be made tradable.
This situation leaves unhappy buyers very little recourse.
Even World Liberty’s most high-profile backer, Tron founder Justin Sun, appears to have been shafted.
He bought $75 million worth of WLFI in the project’s token sale.
When a portion of that stash was made tradable in September, Sun transferred around $9 million worth to another crypto wallet.
In response, World Liberty’s creators froze the tokens, preventing Sun from selling them.
Sun vowed to buy more WLFI tokens after the incident, which appeared to be a gesture of appeasement toward the protocol’s creators.
His tokens remain frozen and have since plummeted in value.
All the while, scrutiny over Trump’s crypto dealings is mounting.
For the president’s political opponents, the issue has become a sticking point in passing the Clarity Act, a broad crypto market-structure bill poised to give the industry a much-needed boost.
Democrats say they can’t support the bill because it allows Trump to continue profiting off crypto.
“The White House has made this infinitely harder,” New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, the bill’s lead Democrat negotiator, said on Thursday.
“I have had private conversations with Republican colleagues and staffers that agree with me. … The fact that Donald Trump is grifting on crypto himself, it’s like me creating a Cory coin,” he added, calling it “ridiculous.”
It’s not a positive development for WLFI token holders caught up in the drama.
At the same time, World Liberty has announced it will hold an in-person forum for the project on February 18 at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private luxury club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The invite-only event will “bring together a select group of the smartest people we know and respect from finance and technology,” Donald Trump Jr said in a video message posted on the World Liberty X account.
Whether this will include anyone that represents the interests of WLFI token holders remains to be seen.
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