Original title: "Token Unlock Soon: A Snapshot of WLFI's Business, Background, Tokens, and Valuation Expectations"

by Alex Xu, Research Partner, Mint Ventures

introduction

Circle's stock price has risen in full swing after its listing (and has fallen significantly in recent days), and stablecoin stocks in the global stock market are also extremely restless. The U.S. stablecoin bill, the Genius Act, has passed the Senate vote and is making its way to the House of Representatives. Recently, the Trump family's pure-blooded project, World Liberty Financial, has reported that the token may be unlocked in advance, which is a blockbuster news in the recent overall depression and lack of theme in the copycat market.

So how exactly is World Liberty Financial doing so far? How is the token mechanism designed? What should be the anchor for valuation? In this article, I will try to sort out the business status, project background details, token mechanism, and valuation expectations of World Liberty Financial in multiple dimensions, and provide you with several perspectives to observe the project.

PS: This article is the author's staged thinking as of the time of publication, which may change in the future, and the views are highly subjective, and there may be errors in facts, data, and reasoning logic.

Business: Product status and core competitive advantages

World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is a decentralized finance platform co-founded by the family of U.S. President Donald Trump, and its core product is the US dollar stablecoin USD1. USD1 is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar and backed entirely by cash and U.S. Treasury reserves. World Liberty Financial also has a business plan for lending (based on Aave) and a Defi app, but it is not yet live.

USD1 transaction data

As of June 2025, the USD1 stablecoin has about $2.2 billion in circulation. Among them, the supply of BNBchain is 2.156 billion, the supply of Ethereum is 48 million, the supply of Tron is 26,000, and the scale of USD1 issued on BNBchain accounts for 97.8%, and the vast majority of USD1 is issued on BNBchain.

In terms of on-chain users, BNBchain has 248,000 crypto-holding addresses, Ethereum has 66,000, and Tron currently has only one.

Looking at token holdings, 93.7% of USD1 (corresponding to 2.02 billion) on BNBchain is in two addresses on Binance, of which 1.9 billion is concentrated in one address (0xF977814e90dA44bFA03b6295A0616a897441aceC) on Binance.

If we look back at the size of USD1's token, we will find that the market cap size of USD1 was only around 130 million before May 1, 2025, but on May 1, the size skyrocketed to 2.13 billion, an overnight increase of nearly $2 billion.

USD1 scale growth curve, source: CMC

This surge in size is actually mainly due to the $2 billion equity investment in the Binance trading platform by Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX in May 2025, which chose USD1 as the payment currency in the transaction, and the size of the USD1 token currently left in the Binance address is just around 2 billion.

This means:

· Binance, which did not convert it into USD or other stablecoins after accepting USD1 investment from Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX, is currently the largest holder of USD1, accounting for 92.8% of the total size of USD1

· If you exclude the tokens formed by this trading platform, USD1 is still a small stablecoin with a circulating market capitalization of just over 100 million

In the future project development, this business expansion model is believed to be repeated.

Business Cooperation

In terms of market expansion, WLFI currently has established cooperation with a number of institutions and agreements. In June 2025, WLFI announced a partnership with London-based crypto fund Re7 to launch a USD1 stablecoin vault on Ethereum lending protocol Euler Finance and Binance Chain staking platform Lista to expand USD1's influence in the Ethereum and BNB Chain ecosystems. Lista is the main BNB staking platform invested by Binance Labs.

In addition, Aave, the largest decentralized lending platform, has also launched a proposal to introduce USD1 to Aave in the Ethereum and BNBchain markets, and the draft has been voted on. In terms of trading platforms, USD1 has been listed on CEXs such as Binance, Bitget, Gate, and Huobi, as well as on DEXs such as Uniswap and PancakeSwap.

World Liberty's competitive advantage

World Liberty's competitive advantage is simple and straightforward: The Trump family's strong influence in politics gives the program an innate advantage over other programs in certain types of business development. The project is also a channel for individuals, organizations, and even countries that have business and political needs for Trump that may be willing to try.

Binance uses USD1 issued by World Liberty as a funding vehicle, accepts a huge investment from Abu Dhabi investment company MGX, and holds it without interest afterwards (equivalent to supporting USD1 TVL), and quickly launches USD1, which is the best example.

However, there are three main risks for World Liberty token holders:

· The Trump family has many ways to receive benefits, and World Liberty may not be the one that the transporters will ultimately pick (for the Trump family's various ways to make money, you can read Bloomberg's article "THE TRUMP FAMILY'S MONEY-MAKING MACHINE" published in late May this year)

· The WLFI token itself is decoupled from the value of the World Liberty project (more on this in the Token Models section below)

· After the Trump family sells tokens, or even on the way, they may basically abandon the heavy operation of the project and run away softly (refer to all the crypto assets issued by Trump in the past, from Trump tokens to various NFTs)

Background: Backers and financing details

Core Team Background

The core team of World Liberty Financial comes from the political and business worlds, which is also the core competitiveness and source of influence of the project.

The heart of the project is undoubtedly the 45th and 47th presidents of the United States, Donald Trump, and his family's three sons, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and 17-year-old Barron Trump.

However, their "project positions" on the official website of World Liberty Financial have undergone subtle changes in the past month, and in the introduction of the official website in mid-June, Donald Trump's position is very fictitious "chief crypto advocate", and the position of the three sons is also very fictitious "Web3 ambassador".

In the project's "Golden Book", the four members of the Trump family are also defined as follows:

Despite this, Trump's four members are ahead of the Co-Founder.

World Liberty Financial's team introduction page for mid-June

However, recently, the introduction of the four people on the team's official page has been changed: Trump himself - "honorary co-founder", and the other three sons have become co-founder.

World Liberty Financial's team introduction page for mid-June

Another minor detail is that Donald Trump himself, as well as Steven Witkoff, another "honorary co-founder" (formerly known as Co-Founder on the official website, now changed to "Emeritus Co-Founder"), have added a small, barely visible footnote "1" to the job description, which is placed at the bottom of the pageThe words "Removed upon taking office." means that once the person takes office, his "honorary co-founder" will be removed.

This is a typical compliance practice designed to allow government stakeholders to avoid conflicts of interest with companies when performing public government duties, and to meet the ethical requirements of the United States that civil servants or senior government officials must sever private business ties.

But here's the thing: Donald Trump is now a public official in the United States — the president of the United States.

In addition to the Trump family, another heavyweight on the team is Trump's longtime business partner, New York real estate tycoon Steven Witkoff, who serves as honorary co-founder. He is the founder and chairman of the Witkoff Group, and has known Donald Trump since the 1980s, and the two have been friends and business partners for a long time, often playing golf together.

Since Trump took office, Steven Witkov has been appointed by Trump as the "US Special Envoy for the Middle East", reporting directly to Trump, playing a central role in major important negotiations, including negotiations between Israel, Qatar, Russia and Ukraine, and he is also Trump's "personal messenger" with Putin, and has repeatedly represented Trump in Moscow to meet with Russian leaders.

The Vitkov family is also actively involved in the project: its sons Zach Witkoff and Alex Witkoff are both WLFI co-founders.

In addition to political and business celebrities, the technology and operations of WLFI are mostly handled by crypto industry figures. Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, both co-founders, are serial entrepreneurs in the crypto space who founded DeFi platform Dough Finance, but the project failed in an early hack. In the WLFI project, Folkman and Herro initially became the primary controllers of the company, before giving way to an entity controlled by the Trump family in January 2025 to take over control.

Another core member, Richmond Teo, was previously the co-founder and former CEO of Asia at WLFI's stablecoin and payments department, Richmond Teo, who was previously the co-founder and former CEO of Paxos, a well-known compliant stablecoin company. In addition, the team includes blockchain practitioners such as Corey Caplan (Head of Technology Strategy) and Ryan Fang (Head of Growth), as well as traditional financial compliance experts such as Brandi Reynolds (Chief Compliance Officer).

The project also invited a number of advisors, such as Luke Pearson, a partner at Polychain Capital, and Sandy Peng, co-founder of the Ethereum layer 2 Scroll network. Sandy Peng assisted with operations during the token sale.

Changes in the Trump family's stake in the World Liberty Financial project

In fact, the Trump family's stake in World Liberty Financial has been declining, from 75% to 40%.

From 75% to 40% of the start, the declining stake may have been transferred to Justin Sun, DWF Labs, and the recently announced $100 million investment in the Aqua 1 Foundation (speculation only).

Financing history and investment institutions

Since its launch in September 2024, World Liberty Financial has raised more than $700 million through multiple rounds of funding, and its valuation has also increased rapidly since Trump took office and after the issuance of coins. The author reviews the various rounds of financing as follows:

It is worth noting that according to the project's Gold-Paper and website, the Trump family will receive 75% of the net proceeds from the token sale (the subsequent resale of the equity should be equivalent to the sales revenue from the disguised resale of tokens), and 60% of the net profit from the future business (obtained from the operation of the stablecoin business).

Tokens: Distribution details, token features, and protocol revenue

Token distribution and unlock details

The WLFI platform's governance token, $WLFI, has a total supply of 100 billion. According to the official "Golden Paper" token economic model, the distribution scheme and unlocking plan of WLFI tokens are as follows:

It's worth noting here that the team allocated 35% of the tokens to the token sale, but only 25% of the public sale has been completed so far, and there is no answer yet as to what to do with the remaining 10%.

In addition, except for the public sale part of the token, which specifies the lock-up period expected to be 12 months in the additional terms, the other parts of the token do not have a clear unlock condition and time, but they are currently in a non-transferable state like the public part of the token. The ambiguity of the specific unlocking terms of the non-public part of the WLFI token brings a high degree of uncertainty to the project.

The worst thing to do is to unlock the tokens and dump them in the secondary market without prior explanation. It is reasonable to announce the unlocking plan of the non-public part of the token in advance before the unlocking of the public WLFI, and unlock it in batches through formal community governance voting.

Token functionality

WLFI is a pure governance token, WLFI does not have any dividend or income rights, does not represent an equity claim to the project company, and its value mainly comes from participating in governance.

Distribution of agreement revenue

In WLFI's official Golden Paper, the treatment of WLFI's protocol revenue says this:

"The initial $30 million net proceeds from the agreement will be held in a reserve controlled by WLF (the Golden Book referred to the project by its acronym WLF at this time, later changed to WLFI) multisig to cover operating expenses, compensation and obligations. Protocol Net Revenue includes WLF revenue from all channels, including, but not limited to, platform usage fees, token sale proceeds, advertising revenue, or other revenue sources, after deducting agreed payouts and WLF's continuing operating reserves. The remainder of the net proceeds from the agreement will be paid to entities such as DT Marks DEFILLC, Axiom Management Group, LLC WC Digital Fi LLC, which are affiliated with our founders and certain service providers (initial supporters). These entities have indicated to the WLF that they plan to use the majority of the fees received for the deployment of the WLF agreement once it is launched."

That said, the protocol's revenue is largely attributed to the entities behind the WLFI (although these companies have pledged to spend most of their fees on supporting the protocol), but it is clear that the WLFI token itself is not directly tied to business revenue.

Valuation: How much is WLFI worth in the long term?

Since WLFI's core business is stablecoins, we can use the "market capitalization/stablecoin market capitalization" ratio of Circle, the valuation level of its main competitor that has been listed, to "approximately" estimate a reasonable valuation range for WLFI tokens. As of the end of June, USDC was around 61.7 billion in size.

Circle's market capitalization was $41.1 billion over the same period, and if options, convertible bonds, etc., are taken into account, the approximate fully diluted market capitalization is $47.1 billion. In other words, the ratio of Circle's "market capitalization/stablecoin market capitalization" is: 411/617~471/617=0.66~0.76.

If calculated based on the current stablecoin size of WLFI of 2.2 billion, the market value of the WLFI project is 22*0.66~0.76, the corresponding project valuation is between 1.452 and 1.672 billion US dollars, and the corresponding WLFI token price is 0.0145~0.0167.

Obviously, this is a number that is difficult for WLFI investors to accept, and it is only near the breakeven line for the first round of public investors. Expectations for WLFI are high, and possible reasons include:

· WLFI is not fully unlocked in the early days, and its circulating market capitalization is much smaller than FDV, and WLFI can enjoy a higher premium

· WLFI is in its early stages, and its potential growth rate is much higher than that of Circle

· WLFI has strong political resources, there should be a "Trump premium", and there will be a large number of projects rushing to cooperate with WLFI

· The sentiment and bubbles in the crypto market are more aggressive than those in the stock market, and WLFI enjoys a higher premium than Circle

· WLFI may follow the passage of the Genius stablecoin bill in the United States and conduct a token issuance, which will enjoy high market sentiment

However, we can also come up with counter-arguments, such as:

· Stablecoins are a highly network-effective business, and the leader should have a strong competitive advantage over new players and a higher valuation premium (think of the profitability of Tether, the first place in the track, compared to the second place Circle)

· WLFI project revenue is not tied to WLFI, WLFI tokens lack value capture and should be heavily discounted when valuation

· WFLI's current stablecoin market capitalization is backed by Binance holdings, which naturally has a low adoption volume and a heavy water injection of business volume

· WLFI may be just one of the many "white label licensing projects" of the Trump family, and they will be as ruthless in selling and operating as Trump tokens and a series of Trump NFTs, and may not be able to invest in them for a long time

· The liquidity of the crypto market, especially altcoins, has long since dried up, and second-tier players hardly believe in all stories that are not supported by hard business data, and most of the new coins listed are in free fall

As an investor, which side of the argument do you prefer? Matter.

In the author's opinion, the winner or loser of the short-term price trend after the launch of the WLFI token depends on the content and timing of the final passage of the Genius bill, and more importantly, whether the Trump family is willing to put WLFI in a more central position as a medium for interest exchange in various benefit transfers and transactions. Specifically, in order to obtain political and commercial benefits, "influential individuals\business entities\sovereign states" take the initiative to embed USD1 into their own business processes, such as using USD1 as the investment currency (equity investment) and settlement currency (cross-border trade) in order to obtain political and commercial benefits.

If there is a lack of similar intensive business news after the launch, I am afraid that WLFI's position in the business map of the Trump family is worrying, and they have a better revenue pipeline.

Let's wait and see how WLFI develops once it goes live. So, when will the specific WLFI tokens be transferred?

I guess it will be after the Genius Act in the United States is finally passed (it is currently passed in the Senate), and that is the time when the project party will be free to do so, and it is not far off.

Link to original article