World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance (DeFi) venture tied to U.S. President Donald Trump and his family, will begin unlocking its WLFI tokens for trading on Sept. 1, the project said on Saturday.
Early backers who bought tokens in private rounds at $0.015 and $0.05 will be able to unlock 20% of their holdings through an onchain “Lockbox” compliance process. The remaining 80% of tokens will stay locked until a future governance vote. Allocations to founders, team members, and advisers will also remain locked for now.
Lockbox activation begins on Aug. 25, with the project stating that “the vast majority” of investors can connect immediately. Only a limited number who fail compliance checks will face restrictions.
The token release follows a July vote in which WLFI holders unanimously backed making the Ethereum-based token tradable. World Liberty is also promoting its USD1 stablecoin and has teased a loyalty program while pursuing a listing on Coinbase.
On Saturday, Binance, Bybit, and OKX launched perpetual futures contracts for WLFI, with the token trading between $0.40 and $0.42 at debut. At that level, the project’s fully diluted valuation stands above $40 billion, based on a total supply of 100 billion WLFI tokens.
If spot markets match futures pricing after the September unlock, the Trump family’s 22.5 billion tokens, held via DT Marks DEFI LLC, would be worth more than $9 billion. Trump’s personal stake, disclosed last year at 15.75 billion tokens, would be valued at over $6 billion—a figure that would more than double his estimated net worth reported by Forbes.
The project has drawn criticism from Democrats, who argue Trump’s involvement raises conflict-of-interest risks. Efforts to include stricter guardrails in the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin legislation signed into law by Trump in July, largely failed.
Since its launch last year, World Liberty Financial pitched itself as a DeFi and stablecoin platform. It has already raised about $550 million through two public token sales. High-profile backers include Tron founder Justin Sun, who invested $30 million for 2 billion tokens, and Web3Port, which contributed $10 million in January.
Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss also invested into American Bitcoin Corp., a crypto mining company tied to Eric Trump, as the firm gears up for a public listing, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The investment was part of a private placement round that raised approximately $220 million in a mix of cash and bitcoin. The funding round was “oversubscribed,” according to Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8 — the company from which American Bitcoin Corp. was spun off.
