Trump’s crypto website crashed after its token went on sale

Former President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency project, World Liberty Financial, launched its token merchantability connected Tuesday — and its website crashed soon afterward.

The whitelist for the much-hyped but still mostly unexplained decentralized concern project opened connected September 30th for accredited investors and non-US persons. World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Folkman claimed connected Monday that “well implicit 100,000 people” had signed up to bargain its token WLFI, according to CNBC. As of work time, the tract appeared to beryllium backmost online.

However, according to blockchain information tracked by Etherscan, conscionable 5,317 unsocial wallet addresses held the token arsenic of Tuesday afternoon, and World Liberty Financial said it sold much than 532 cardinal tokens of the 20 cardinal made disposable for nationalist sale.

Sandy Peng, a WLFI advisor, told CoinDesk that the outages resulted from excessive traffic. “The squad wasn’t expecting this level of interest,” Peng said, adding that the website received 72 cardinal unsocial visits successful the archetypal hr aft the token launched.

CoinDesk reports that the WLFI token, which volition beryllium non-transferrable for now, volition beryllium utilized to govern the World Liberty Financial platform. Holders volition beryllium capable to person a accidental successful protocol upgrades, method changes, promotional partnerships, and oversight of information risks. The level itself volition fto users get and lend cryptocurrency.

Despite Trump and his associates’ promotion of World Liberty Financial arsenic a instrumentality to assistance unbanked and de-banked people, lone those who conscionable the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) accredited capitalist requirements tin acquisition WLFI. To suffice arsenic an accredited investor, a idiosyncratic indispensable person an income of astatine slightest $200,000 (or $300,000 with a spouse) and/or a nett worthy of astatine slightest $1 million, excluding their superior residence.

World Liberty Financial released a alleged “gold paper” astir the token connected Tuesday, which lists Trump arsenic the “chief crypto associate.” His 3 sons — Eric, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron — are listed arsenic Web3 Ambassadors. 

According to the paper, the World Liberty Financial protocol “plans to supply users with accusation and entree to third-party DeFi applications, including 3rd enactment integer wallet providers for acquiring, holding, and transferring unchangeable coins, and non-security integer assets.” Notably, the insubstantial says that the tokens “ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR U.S. PERSONS” and “HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED WITH ANY U.S. OR OTHER AUTHORITY.”