PANews reported on April 1 that when World Liberty Financial raised more than $500 million, industry experts pointed out that the family of former US President Donald Trump took control of the crypto company and seized most of the funds with governance clauses that favored insiders. The project is billed as a "DeFi platform" and claims to allow users to bypass banks and directly use cryptocurrencies to obtain financial services. However, the investigation found that the platform has not yet been publicly operated and the team size is extremely limited.
Despite this, World Liberty announced in mid-March that it had raised $550 million by selling governance tokens. Reuters calculations show that most of these sales took place after Trump’s victory in November last year, and that WLFI tokens only give holders voting rights to modify project code and are not publicly traded. In January of this year, changes to the World Liberty website details showed that two co-founders, Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, had transferred control to an entity in which the Trump family holds a 60% stake. At this point, the Trump family can receive 75% of the net proceeds from token sales and 60% of the platform’s operating income. Based on this calculation, approximately $400 million in financing has now belonged to the Trump family, leaving only 5% (approximately $27.5 million) for platform construction.
