Original Article Title: "Token Unlock Imminent: A Comprehensive Overview of WLFI's Business, Background, Token, and Valuation Expectations"

Original Article Author: Alex Xu, Research Partner at Mint Ventures

Introduction

Following Circle's listing, the stock price surged (recently experiencing a significant decline), and global stock market stablecoin concept stocks have also been unusually volatile. The U.S. stablecoin bill, the "Genius Act," has passed the Senate vote and is now bravely advancing to the House of Representatives. Most recently, the Trump family's pureblood project, World Liberty Financial, has hinted at the potential early unlocking of its tokens for circulation, marking a significant news event in the overall sluggish and lackluster meme market.

So, how is World Liberty Financial currently performing? How is the token mechanism designed? And what should be the anchor for valuation? In this article, the author will attempt to provide a multi-dimensional analysis of World Liberty Financial's business status, project background details, token mechanism, and valuation expectations, offering several perspectives for observing the project.

PS: This article reflects the author's interim thinking at the time of publication, which may change in the future. The viewpoints are highly subjective and may contain errors in facts, data, and reasoning logic. All views in this article are not investment advice. Feedback and further discussion from colleagues and readers are welcome.

Business: Current Product Status and Core Competitive Advantage

World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is a decentralized finance platform founded with the involvement of the U.S. President Donald Trump's family. Its core product is the USD1 stablecoin. USD1 is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar and fully backed by cash and U.S. Treasury reserves. World Liberty Financial also has business plans for lending (based on Aave) and a Defi App, which have not yet been launched.

USD1 Business Data

As of June 2025, the circulating supply of USD1 stablecoin is approximately $2.2 billion. The supply distribution includes 21.56 billion on the BNBchain, 48 million on Ethereum, and 26,000 on Tron. The USD1 issued on the BNBchain accounts for 97.8% of the total USD1 supply, with the majority of USD1 issued on the BNBchain.

In terms of on-chain user count, BNBchain has 248,000 holding addresses, Ethereum has 66,000, and Tron currently has only 1.

Looking at the token distribution, 93.7% of USD1 on BNBchain (corresponding to 2.02 billion) is held in two addresses owned by Binance, with 1.9 billion concentrated in one of Binance's addresses (0xF977814e90dA44bFA03b6295A0616a897441aceC).

Reviewing the token supply of USD1, we find that the market cap of USD1 was only about 130 million before May 1, 2025. However, on May 1, the scale surged to 2.13 billion, growing nearly 2 billion overnight.

USD1 growth curve, Source: CMC

This significant increase in scale mainly resulted from Abu Dhabi investment company MGX's $2 billion equity investment in the Binance trading platform in May 2025. MGX chose USD1 as the payment currency for the transaction. The current size of USD1 tokens remaining in Binance's address is also around 2 billion.

This implies:

· After accepting MGX's $1 billion investment in USD1, Binance did not convert it into USD or other stablecoins. It is currently the largest holder of USD1, accounting for 92.8% of the total USD1 supply.

· Excluding the tokens generated by this platform transaction, USD1 is still a small-scale stablecoin with a circulating market cap of just over 1 billion.

In the future project development, this kind of business expansion model is believed to reappear repeatedly.

Business Partnerships

In terms of market expansion, WLFI has currently partnered with multiple institutions and protocols. In June 2025, WLFI announced a partnership with London Crypto Fund Re7 to launch a USD1 stablecoin vault on the Ethereum lending protocol Euler Finance and the Binance Chain staking platform Lista to expand the influence of USD1 in the Ethereum and BNB Chain ecosystems. Lista is a major BNB staking platform invested in by Binance Labs.

In addition, the largest decentralized lending platform Aave has initiated a proposal to introduce USD1 to the Aave markets on Ethereum and BNBchain. The proposal has already been voted on and approved. As for exchanges, USD1 has been listed on CEXs such as Binance, Bitget, Gate, Huobi, and on DEXs like Uniswap, PancakeSwap, and others.

World Liberty's Competitive Advantage

World Liberty's competitive advantage is straightforward: the Trump family's strong political influence allows this project to have a innate advantage in certain types of business expansion that other projects do not possess. This project serves as a conduit of benefits for individuals, organizations, and even countries that have a need for Trump's influence in business and politics, and may be willing to explore such a channel.

By using Binance as the funding vehicle for USD1 issued by World Liberty, accepting a substantial investment from the MGX investment company in Abu Dhabi, and subsequently holding it without interest (effectively supporting TVL with USD1), and swiftly listing USD1, is a prime example.

However, the main risks for World Liberty token holders are threefold:

· The Trump family has various conduits for benefit delivery, and World Liberty may not necessarily be the chosen conduit for these benefactors (For more on the diverse methods of the Trump family's wealth accumulation, you can read Bloomberg's late May article: THE TRUMP FAMILY'S MONEY-MAKING MACHINE, which covers a variety of methods)

· The WLFI token itself may become detached from the value of the World Liberty project (which will be detailed in the section on tokenomics below)

· After the Trump family sells off the tokens, or even during the sell-off process, they may largely abandon the project's heavy operations, effectively exiting (Refer to all previous Trump-issued crypto assets, from Trump tokens to various NFTs)

Background: Backing and Financing Details

Core Team Background

The core team of World Liberty Financial comes from the political and business sectors, which is also the core source of the project's competitive and influential edge.

Undoubtedly, the key figure of this project is the 45th and 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump, along with his three sons—Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the 17-year-old Barron Trump.

However, there has been a subtle change in their "Project Positions" on the World Liberty Financial website over the past month. In the mid-June website introduction, Donald Trump's position was a very vague "Chief Crypto Advocate," and his three sons' positions were similarly vague "Web3 Ambassadors."

In the project's "Goldpaper," the four members of the Trump family were also defined as:

Nevertheless, the emission positions of the four Trump family members were listed ahead of the project's co-founders in the lineup.

World Liberty Financial Mid-June Team Introduction Page

However, in recent days, the team's official page has been updated to introduce the four individuals as follows: Trump himself as "Honorary Co-Founder," with the other three sons becoming Co-Founders.

World Liberty Financial Mid-June Team Introduction Page

Another minor detail is that Donald Trump himself, as well as another "Honorary Co-Founder" Steven Witkoff (previously listed as Co-Founder on the website, now changed to "Honorary Co-Founder"), have had a nearly invisible small footnote "1" added after their position descriptions. The explanation for this footnote is placed at the very bottom of the webpage, stating in small font: "Removed upon taking office." This means once the individual takes public office, their "Honorary Co-Founder" title will be removed.

This is a typical compliance practice aimed at ensuring government officials avoid conflicts of interest with company interests when assuming public office, meeting the ethical requirements that U.S. public servants or government officials must sever private business ties.

However, the issue is: Donald Trump is currently a U.S. public official—the President of the United States.

In addition to the Trump family, another heavyweight in the team is Trump's long-time business partner, New York real estate tycoon Steven Witkoff, serving as an Honorary Co-Founder. He is the founder and chairman of the Witkoff Group, having known Donald Trump since the 1980s. The two have had a longstanding relationship, often playing golf together, and are widely known as "old friends and business partners."

Since Trump took office, Steven Witkoff was appointed by Trump as the "U.S. Middle East Envoy," reporting directly to Trump, playing a key role in major negotiations, including those with Israel, Qatar, Russia, and Ukraine. He also acted as Trump's "personal emissary" to Putin, representing Trump in multiple meetings with Russian leaders in Moscow.

The Witkoff family has also been actively involved in the project: his sons Zach Witkoff and Alex Witkoff are both co-founders of WLFI.

In addition to political and business figures, WLFI's technology and operations are mostly managed by individuals from the cryptocurrency industry. Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, both co-founders, are serial entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency field. They previously founded the DeFi platform Dough Finance, which unfortunately failed early on due to a hacking attack. Their entrepreneurial journey can hardly be considered successful. In the WLFI project, Folkman and Herro initially held the majority control of the company but relinquished control to a Trump family-controlled entity in January 2025.

Another core member, Richmond Teo, serves as the head of WLFI's stablecoin and payments department. Richmond Teo was previously a co-founder and former CEO of Paxos, a well-known compliance-focused stablecoin company in Asia. Additionally, the team includes blockchain professionals such as Corey Caplan (Chief Technology Strategist), Ryan Fang (Head of Growth), and traditional financial compliance experts like Brandi Reynolds (Chief Compliance Officer).

The project has also enlisted several advisors, such as Luke Pearson, a partner at Polychain Capital, and Sandy Peng, co-founder of the Ethereum Layer 2 Scroll Network. Sandy Peng assisted with operations during the token sale.

Changes in Trump Family's Equity Stake in the World Liberty Financial Project

In fact, the Trump family's ownership stake in World Liberty Financial has been decreasing, currently dropping from the initial 75% to 40%.

The equity that has decreased from 75% to 40% may have been transferred to Justin Sun, DWF Labs, and the Aqua 1 Foundation, which recently announced a $100 million investment participation (speculation only).

Funding Journey and Investment Institutions

Since its launch in September 2024, World Liberty Financial has raised over $700 million through multiple funding rounds, with its valuation rapidly increasing after the Trump administration and coin issuance. Below is an overview of each funding round:

It is worth noting that according to the project's Gold-Paper and website disclosures, the Trump family is entitled to 75% of the proceeds from token sales (subsequently equivalent to reselling equity, which should be equal to a de facto resale of the token sales proceeds) and 60% of future net profits (obtained from operating a stablecoin business).

Token: Allocation Details, Token Functionality, and Protocol Revenue

Token Allocation and Unlocking Details

The governance token of the WLFI platform, $WLFI, has a total supply of 100 billion tokens. According to the official "Golden Paper" of the platform, the tokenomics model and distribution plan for WLFI tokens are as follows:

It is worth noting here that the team allocated 35% of the tokens for token sales, but currently, only 25% of the public sale has been completed, and there is no answer yet on how to deal with the remaining 10%.

Furthermore, in addition to the explicit lockup period expected in December for the public sale portion of WLFI tokens, there are no clear unlocking conditions and timelines for the other tokens. Currently, like the tokens from the public sale, the remaining WLFI tokens are also non-transferable. The ambiguity of the specific unlocking terms for the non-public sale portion of WLFI tokens has brought significant uncertainty to the project.

The worst practice would be for the team to pre-unlock these tokens without prior notice and dump them on the secondary market. A more reasonable approach would be to provide advance notice of the unlocking plan for the non-public sale tokens before the public sale unlocks and to conduct phased unlocks through formal community governance voting.

Token Functionality

WLFI is a pure governance token that does not carry any dividends or ownership rights in the project company. Its value mainly comes from participating in governance.

Protocol Revenue Distribution

In the official Gold-Paper of WLFI, the handling of WLFI's protocol revenue is described as follows:

The initial $30 million protocol net revenue will be held in a reserve controlled by WLF (referred to as WLF in the Whitepaper at this time, later changed to WLFI) multi-signature, used for operational expenses, compensations, and obligations. Protocol net revenue includes WLF income from all channels, including but not limited to platform usage fees, token sale proceeds, advertising revenue, or other income sources, net of agreed-upon expenses and WLF's ongoing operational reserves. The remaining protocol net revenue will be distributed to DT Marks DEFILLC, Axiom Management Group, LLC WC Digital Fi LLC, and other entities associated with our founders and certain service providers (initial supporters). These entities have indicated to WLF that once the WLF protocol is live, they plan to allocate most of the fees received to the deployment of the protocol.

In other words, the protocol's revenue primarily goes to the corporate entities behind WLFI (although these companies have committed to allocating most fees to support the protocol), but it can be explicitly stated that the WLFI token itself is not directly tied to business revenue.

Valuation: How Much is WLFI Worth Long-Term?

As WLFI's core business is a stablecoin, we can look at the valuation level of the major competitor Circle that is already listed, using its "Market Cap/Stablecoin Market Cap" ratio to "roughly estimate" the reasonable valuation range of the WLFI token. As of the end of June, USDC's scale was about 617 billion.

At the same time, Circle's market cap was $411 billion, and if options, convertible bonds, and other instruments are taken into account, the fully diluted market cap is around $471 billion. That is, Circle's "Market Cap/Stablecoin Market Cap" ratio is: 411/617~471/617=0.66~0.76.

If we calculate based on WLFI's stablecoin scale of 22 billion, the market cap of the WLFI project is 22*0.66~0.76, corresponding to a project valuation ranging from $14.52 billion to $16.72 billion, and the corresponding WLFI token price is 0.0145~0.0167.

Obviously, this is a number that WLFI investors find hard to accept, and for first-round public sale investors, it is only close to the breakeven point. People have high expectations for WLFI, possible reasons include:

· WLFI was initially not fully unlocked, with its circulating market value far below the FDV, allowing WLFI to enjoy a higher premium

· WLFI is in its early stages, with its potential growth rate far surpassing Circle

· WLFI has substantial political resources and should have a "Trump premium," attracting numerous projects eager to collaborate with WLFI

· The sentiment and bubble in the crypto market are more aggressive than in the stock market, allowing WLFI to enjoy a higher premium than Circle

· WLFI may closely follow the timing of the U.S. Genius Stablecoin Act passing, conducting a token issuance to capitalize on high market sentiment

However, we can also present corresponding opposing reasons, such as:

· Stablecoins operate with extremely strong network effects, where incumbents should have a stronger competitive advantage and higher valuation premium compared to newcomers (think of the earning capabilities between the top Tether and second-place Circle)

· WLFI's project revenue is unrelated to WLFI, and the WLFI token lacks value capture, warranting a significant discount in valuation

· Currently, 93% of WFLI's stablecoin market value is supported by Binance, indicating low organic adoption and substantial wash trading

· WLFI may be just one of the many "white-label authorized projects" of the Trump family, operating as ruthlessly in selling and operations as Trump tokens and a series of Trump NFTs, possibly lacking long-term commitment

· The liquidity in the crypto market, especially in altcoins, has long been drained, with secondary players hardly believing any story lacking solid business data support, causing most new coin listings to free fall

As an investor, which viewpoint would you be more inclined to adopt? It's a matter of personal perspective.

In the author's opinion, the short-term price trajectory of the WLFI token after listing depends, on one hand, on the final content and timing of the Genius Act, but more importantly on whether the Trump family is willing to position WLFI in a more central role in various interest conveyance and transactions as a medium of exchange. This manifests specifically as "influential individuals/businesses/sovereign states" embedding USD1 (even symbolically) in their business processes to gain political and commercial advantages, such as using USD1 as an investment currency (equity investment) or settlement currency (cross-border trade).

If there is a lack of similar intensive commercial news after listing, WLFI's position in the Trump family's business landscape may be precarious, as they have better revenue channels.

Let's wait and see the development of WLFI after the listing. So, when will the specific time for WLFI token transferability be?

I guess it will be after the official final passage of the Genius Act in the United States (it has currently passed the Senate), that will be the time when the project team can freely play, and it's not far off.

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