When a political family crosses into crypto, is it a revolution that disrupts traditional finance, or a carefully designed harvesting game? The Trump family's operated $WLFI project is challenging the rules of the crypto world with a dual-core model of 'governance tokens + stablecoins', but what kind of power codes and wealth traps lie behind it?
The essence of the WLFI project is a capital game under a political label, only this time it is wrapped in the skin of cryptocurrency, and the battlefield is merely the crypto market...
WLFI is not an ordinary DeFi token, but a carefully designed 'crypto political tool' by the Trump family. Its core consists of the governance token WLFI and the stablecoin USD1: the former is used for voting decisions, while the latter is pegged to U.S. Treasury bonds. It seems to strengthen the position of the dollar, but in reality, it conceals the family's logic of control.
The project is registered in Delaware, which is a tax haven for US businesses, carrying a strong 'family business' imprint from its inception. The political halo attracts traffic but also sows seeds of controversy.
What seems to be an unprecedented financing miracle is actually a feast for early players who have already made their fortunes.
The financing trajectory is nothing short of insane, starting from an angel round at $0.015 at the end of 2024, exchanging $2.7 million for a massive amount of tokens, to the private placement price skyrocketing to $0.05 in 2025, raising over $200 million in just 53 days; subsequently, the public fundraising sold 25% of the tokens at once, raking in $550 million. Early investors saw their returns multiply by dozens of times, while the Trump family holds 25% of the total tokens, possessing tens of billions in paper wealth. This is not just a token project; it is clearly a family-led capital feast.
The launch of WLFI reveals a microcosm of market truths; this is a game of control and a liquidity trap.
On its first day, it staged a 'roller coaster', with the opening price plummeting from $0.4 to $0.2, and a 24-hour trading volume exceeding $1 billion. Although it ranks among the top 30 tokens globally, the liquidity fluctuations are severe, exposing its speculative nature. More critically, the family's 25% holding ratio renders the 'governance token' a joke, and the so-called 'community voting' is merely a cover for family control.
Is this a vision for a crypto empire, or a carnival exclusive to them? This is an ambition from tokens to crypto hegemony.
The Trump family's ambitions go far beyond the tokens themselves; they are building a crypto ecosystem through WLFI and USD1, laying out digital asset ETFs, Bitcoin strategic reserves, corporate payment scenarios, and even promoting a 'national strategic Bitcoin reserve'. Token buybacks and burns create scarcity, while the USD1 stablecoin attempts to extend dollar hegemony into the crypto world, clearly aiming to build a 'politics + capital + technology' crypto empire.
If it weren't for their unique identity and status, this would undoubtedly be the most fatal risk, entailing triple landmines of control, unlocking, and regulation.
Control risk arises from the family's excessively high holding ratio, with limited free circulation. The price is completely manipulated by a single interest party, reducing ordinary investors to 'cash machines', which raises questions of trust. The unlocking mechanism is opaque, users have faced fund retention, and if there are errors during the unlocking process, a withdrawal crisis could erupt at any time. Most importantly, there is the risk of political regulation; Trump's return to the White House could be the biggest boon, but the political label is bound to attract stricter regulatory scrutiny, even triggering constitutional controversies over 'presidents not accepting foreign interests.'
When political power floods into the crypto market, is it driving industry compliance or exacerbating the centralization crisis? The Trump family's WLFI experiment might be rewriting the rules of the crypto world, but what will be the outcome of this game? A new era that disrupts dollar hegemony, or a political Waterloo?
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