World Liberty Financial Targets $250M With Additional Token Sale

According to World Liberty Financial, the token sale was expanded due to increased demand for the tokens. The platform also recently made some very large Ethereum purchases, totaling $48 million. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced leadership changes to boost decentralization efforts after a challenging year for the Ethereum Foundation. Only time will tell what the effect of these leadership changes will be on the price of ETH. Meanwhile, the launch of Trump’s Solana-based meme coin, TRUMP, caused both excitement and controversy, and even drove Solana to an all-time high.

World Liberty Financial Expands Token Sale

World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance platform backed by Donald Trump, finished its initial token sale and is now offering an additional 5% of its token supply at a 230% markup due to increased demand. The platform was launched in September last year, and originally aimed to sell 20% of its 100 billion World Liberty Financial (WLFI) tokens. 

In a recent post, the project revealed that an extra 5 billion tokens are now available for purchase at 5 cents each. If sold out, this will allow the project to potentially raise an additional $250 million. The initial sale was priced at 1.5 cents per token, and it generated $300 million despite a slow start caused by restrictions on US retail investors.

Justin Sun, the founder of Tron and an early supporter of the project, also announced another $45 million investment on Jan. 19, increasing his total stake to $75 million. Sun previously bought $30 million worth of WLFI tokens in November, which made him the platform’s largest investor. The project’s first token sale began on Oct. 15, and was limited to US-accredited investors and non-US citizens.

The WLFI token is the governance token for World Liberty Financial’s upcoming decentralized crypto trading platform, and it allows holders to participate in community voting. However, the token is currently non-transferable and cannot be sold. 

In addition to the token sale, World Liberty Financial announced a partnership with TRUMP, a meme coin tied to the president-elect. After its launch on Jan. 19, TRUMP spiked to over $73 before retreating lower after Melania Trump introduced her own meme coin.

World Liberty Financial Buys Millions in ETH

In addition to expanding its token sales, World Liberty Financial also recently bought a large amount of Ethereum (ETH) as the token showed signs of strengthening against Bitcoin (BTC). On Jan. 19, the platform purchased 14,403 Ether in multiple transactions, totaling $48 million. This brought World Liberty Financial’s total ETH holdings to 42,427, which is valued at over $143 million, according to data from Arkham Intelligence.

ETH’s performance against Bitcoin is measured by the ETH/BTC ratio, and it experienced a minor increase to 0.03113 after a steep 18% decline over the past six weeks. WLFI’s purchase coincides with a recent surge in Solana’s token price, which hit an all-time high of $270 after Trump’s unexpected meme coin launch on the Solana network.

The reasoning behind the Ether purchases is still unclear, though Eric Trump hinted on Jan. 19 that the platform is preparing for an announcement. “Wait until you see what they do tomorrow,” he wrote in a post.

Ethereum’s price action over the past 24 hours (Source: CoinMarketCap)

ETH’s price fluctuated between $3,133.98 and $3,439.78 over the past 24 hours but is currently trading at $3,372 after a more than 5% price jump over the past 24 hours of trading. Meanwhile, Google searches for “Ethereum” also surged, and reached peak popularity on Jan. 19.

Vitalik Buterin Announces Ethereum Foundation Leadership Overhaul

Trump’s WLFI is not the only factor that could influence ETH’s price. Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, announced a number of leadership changes in the Ethereum Foundation to prioritize technical expertise and strengthen communication with developers in the ecosystem. In a Jan. 18 post, Buterin outlined some of his plans to support decentralized application developers and champion decentralization, censorship resistance, and privacy. He mentioned that the Foundation will avoid political lobbying, ideological shifts, or taking a centralized role in Ethereum’s development.

The leadership shake-up comes after a very turbulent 2024 for the Ethereum Foundation. Criticism from the community centered around its spending, roadmap execution, and conflicts of interest. 

The Foundation even introduced a conflict-of-interest policy in May of 2024 after certain researchers, including Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist, took advisory roles at EigenLayer Foundation, the organization overseeing the restaking protocol. Drake later resigned from his advisory position in November of 2024, apologized to the community, and vowed to avoid such roles in the future.

The year also saw the release of the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, which dramatically reduced transaction fees for Ethereum’s layer-2 networks by up to 99%. This led to a rapid increase in layer-2 rollups, with L2Beat reporting 55 active networks. However, the growth caused some concerns about revenue cannibalization on Ethereum’s base layer. Network revenues on the base layer dropped 99% during the summer but luckily recovered to pre-upgrade levels by the end of the year, according to Token Terminal.

Analysts Debate Impact of Trump’s Crypto Venture

World Liberty Financial is not the only Trump-linked project that caught the crypto world by storm recently. In fact, the crypto industry is still buzzing after President-elect Donald Trump’s Solana-based meme coin, Official Trump (TRUMP), launched on Jan. 17. The token was launched just days before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, and fueled speculation about the potential prioritization of crypto during his presidency.

The meme coin brought in over 200,000 new on-chain users to the crypto space through the Moonshot trading platform. Analysts like Pav Hundal of Swyftx see the token’s strong reception as a very positive signal for the industry due to its impact on decentralized exchange volumes and Solana’s native token, SOL, which hit an all-time high of $270. 

However, there are still many critics who are not very happy with the meme coin. Scott Melker specifically pointed to the concentration of 80% of the TRUMP supply in a single wallet as a red flag, and Arkham Intelligence believes it may belong to Trump. Melker criticized the launch as a “cash grab,” while others, like Erik Thoughts, argued that Trump’s majority stake could protect the token from a rug pull, making it a safe investment.

Not everyone is as optimistic. TradeZella founder Umar Ashraf and Moonwell Finance founder Luke Youngblood are doubtful about the appropriateness of Trump promoting his own meme coin, and suggested that it could harm the industry’s long-term reputation. Despite these concerns, Youngblood urged Coinbase to list the token, and argued that it will provide a safer trading environment for Trump supporters.

The token’s debut coincided with the Trump-honoring “Crypto Ball,” which is a high-profile event attended by many well known people like Michael Saylor, Brian Armstrong, the Winklevoss twins, and David Sacks. While the meme coin has undoubtedly driven interest and adoption, its long-term implications for the crypto industry are still very uncertain.