(Bloomberg) -- World Liberty Financial, a crypto project promoted by Donald Trump and his sons, experienced technology issues as it began selling tokens on Tuesday.
The token went live this morning to accredited investors on the World Liberty Financial website, which experienced numerous outages. As of 1:48 p.m. New York time, more than 500 million of the Ethereum-based tokens were sold for 1.5 cents each, according to the site.
World Liberty Financial planned to raise $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation through the initial token sale on Tuesday. On September 30, the project began accepting names for its approved list of accredited investors, which are individuals who meet certain income or professional criteria such having a net worth in excess of $1 million.
Over the weekend, Trump touted the sale in a post on X. World Liberty Financial’s accounts on X and Telegram have not yet posted about the sale on Tuesday. Representatives for the project did not reply to requests for comment.
The Trump-backed crypto project is part of the decentralized finance segment of digital assets and launched a day after the former president emerged from a second apparent assassination attempt. An early white paper, a type of research-based document often used to promote crypto projects, had a disclaimer that said the effort is “not owned, managed, operated or sold” by the Trump family, while noting they may receive compensation.
“We plan for all Americans to be able to use this platform in the future, giving everyone access to the tools and opportunities that have been restricted for far too long,” according to one of the the project’s posts.
Like many crypto projects, World Liberty has had to fend off apparent scams and impersonators on social media, causing it to end its announcements on X with images that say “this is the last post in this thread. Any post below this that looks like us is likely a phishing scam.” For example, as some crypto traders complained Tuesday on social media about not being able to buy the tokens, an account on X that displayed the project’s logo under a similar user name as World Liberty’s posted that the the website was down and “We have taken steps to allow you to purchase $WLFI tokens using the presale deposit address” and gave a blockchain address. The account was later suspended by X.
The platform’s token presale comes three weeks before the presidential election and accompanies Trump’s efforts to appeal to crypto voters. The former president headlined the world’s largest Bitcoin conference earlier this summer and launched his fourth collection of nonfungible tokens in August. Donald Trump is listed as World Liberty Financial’s chief crypto advocate, while his sons, Eric, Donald Jr. and Barron Trump are named as its web3 ambassadors. The project also includes Paxos co-founder Rich Teo as its stablecoin and payment lead, as well as Luke Pearson, a senior research cryptographer for Polychain.
--With assistance from Olga Kharif.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.