In summary
- Tron founder Justin Sun purchased $30 million in governance tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLFI), giving him a majority stake in the Trump family’s decentralized finance (DeFi) project.
- The massive token purchase allowed World Liberty to surpass its $30 million sales goal, closing its initial token offering (ICO) and securing payouts for the project’s founders, including Donald Trump.
- With this transaction, a Trump-associated LLC will receive 75% of the net proceeds, which could translate into $15 million from the Sun purchase alone, although the destination of those funds, such as their reinvestment, is unclear.
After months of lackluster sales, the Trump family’s decentralized finance (DeFi) project, World Liberty Financial, received a boost of support on Monday from none other than Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron Blockchain.
Sun confirmed the purchase of $30 million in World Liberty governance tokens (WLFI), from its followers on X (formerly known as Twitter). The project had previously sold just over $20 million in tokens, meaning Sun now controls a sizable majority of the Ethereum-based WLFI tokens currently in circulation.
When World Liberty initially launched in late September, it was seeking $300 million in sales from WLFI. However, once the project opened with slow demand, it reduced that goal by 90%, to just $30 million in token sales.
Even that revised goal proved elusive. But with the massive purchase of Sun tokens, the project finally surpassed $30 million in sales, effectively closing its initial token offering. The project said in an October filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it would end sales after passing that milestone.
It’s also a key milestone for the project’s founders, who will finally see payment for their stake in World Liberty. According to the project’s “gold paper,” only after raising $30 million to establish a reserve for expenses and liabilities will key participants, including President-elect Donald Trump, receive a payment.
That threshold has finally been reached thanks to Sun. According to the same document, a Delaware-incorporated LLC associated with Trump will now earn 75% of the protocol’s net revenue, including token sales, earned in excess of the initial $30 million raised.
This means that by purchasing Sun tokens alone, the Trump-affiliated entity should get $15 million.
While World Liberty has said that project team members like Trump have indicated an intention to reinvest earned fees into World Liberty’s platform once it launches, it is unclear what, if anything, would commit them to doing so.
Decrypt reached out to the World Liberty team with questions about the token sale and its implications for the project, but did not receive an immediate response.
Sun, for his part, seemed eager to link his token purchase directly to Trump as an individual, weeks before the president-elect returns to the White House.
“The US is becoming the center of blockchain,” Sun wrote. “And Bitcoin owes it to Donald Trump!”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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