Trump family encryption project WLFI: The celebration and concerns amidst a $700 million fundraising frenzy
What kind of capital game will emerge when cryptocurrency intertwines with the political family power? The encryption project $WLFI, dominated by the Trump family, has garnered over 700 million dollars in just a few months, providing a controversial answer. This encryption product, which uses the "consolidation of the dollar's status" as a gimmick, essentially resembles a carefully designed tool for family wealth harvesting, hiding risk traps that ordinary investors find hard to detect beneath the surface of market euphoria.
From the perspective of financing paths, the "money-raising" rhythm of $WLFI can be considered a "textbook operation" in the encryption circle. At the launch at the end of 2024, the unit price of its angel round token was only 1.5 cents, locking in a large amount of chips with just 2.7 million dollars; as it entered 2025, the private placement price directly soared to 5 cents, and the fundraising quota of 200 million dollars was declared sold out in just 53 days; by the ICO stage, the project party directly released 25% of the total token supply, raising 550 million dollars in one go. In just a few months, the total fundraising exceeded 700 million dollars, and this "rocket-like" fundraising speed not only exposed the market's enthusiasm for the "Trump IP", but also reflected the frenzy of speculation in the encryption field.
In this capital feast, the biggest winners are undoubtedly the Trump family and early participants. Angel round investors who entered at 1.5 cents have seen their book profits multiply by dozens of times; the Trump family not only holds 25% of the total tokens but also controls 75% of the token sales revenue, with paper profits easily exceeding one billion dollars. $WLFI has clearly become the family's exclusive "encryption ATM."
The market performance has further amplified the speculative attributes of the project. On the day of $WLFI's launch, the price plummeted from $0.4 to $0.2, yet within 24 hours, it recorded a trading volume of $1 billion, directly entering the top 30 global token trading volumes. This contradictory phenomenon of "plummeting + high trading" not only confirms the project's intense attention but also exposes the "roller coaster" risk of liquidity—short-term markets are completely dominated by speculative funds, and if ordinary investors chase high prices to enter, they may easily get stuck at high levels if they are not careful.
What is even more concerning is the "absolute family control" behind $WLFI. With 25% of the tokens concentrated in the family’s hands, the price movement is almost entirely dictated by their will; 75% of the sales revenue belongs to the family, putting ordinary retail investors at a disadvantage from the very beginning in an "unfair trade". Moreover, the project’s future plans reveal even greater ambition: it plans to launch an encryption ETF to bridge the traditional financial market, promote the listing of American Bitcoin, and advocate for the establishment of a "national strategic Bitcoin reserve for the United States", attempting to embed the stablecoin USD1, which is pegged to the dollar and U.S. Treasury bonds, into corporate payments and the DeFi sector—these actions appear to be "dressing the dollar hegemony in encryption garb", but in reality, they are expanding the family's capital territory through political influence. Additionally, the project party is also trying to create scarcity through token buybacks and destruction, further paving the way for "harvesting retail investors".
Under the carnival, two major risks are already hidden. The first is the highly concentrated control, which makes retail investors like "meat on the chopping board." A 25% family shareholding means that as long as there is selling or price control at the family level, ordinary investors have no ability to resist and can only passively endure price fluctuations; the second is the opacity of the token unlocking mechanism, which buries hidden dangers. Previously, some users encountered funding glitches when unlocking tokens. If similar issues arise again in the future, it could even trigger a withdrawal crisis, leaving investors' funds in a situation of "visible but untouchable."
In my opinion, the Trump family has transformed political influence into capital leverage. The turmoil created in the encryption circle has indeed generated a wealth myth in the short term, but in the long run, it has buried greater hidden dangers for the encryption market. The encryption field is already chaotic due to inadequate regulation, and now with the involvement of political forces, it will not make the market safer, but rather might turn it into a "playground for collusion between power and capital." For ordinary retail investors, if they want to take a slice of the pie in this game, they must first clearly recognize the reality: in the face of absolute power and capital advantages, are they truly the "players" who can control the pace, or are they just "pawns" who can be discarded at any moment?