(Corrects price in paragraph 7)
By Michelle Conlin
NEW YORK, April 15 (Reuters) – World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by President Trump and his sons, released a new proposal Wednesday that would prevent early investors from trading tokens – 80% of their holdings are currently locked by the firm – for two years, followed by an additional two-year vesting period, according to a statement posted on its governance forum.
The measure, which will be subjected to a vote in one week, means early investors holding 17 billion tokens won’t have the ability to trade all of their tokens until 2030, a year after the president is scheduled to leave office. ”This proposal was designed to optimally ensure long-term participation in our ecosystem and help ensure healthy market supply,” said World Liberty Financial spokesman David Wachsman, in a statement to Reuters.
The strictures would also apply to World Liberty tokens held personally by the project’s founders, which includes the president and his three sons, along with an additional year of vesting and the deletion or “burn” of 10% of their tokens. It did not, though, change the terms of the project’s token sales, which send 75% of all new token proceeds to the Trump family. Asked whether World Liberty would continue the sale of new tokens, Wachsman replied, “Stay tuned to World Liberty’s official X account for updates.”
The new proposal comes amidst complaints from investors who say the company has frozen their funds while extracting hundreds of millions of dollars for itself. The Trump family has already made more than $1 billion from World Liberty, according to a Reuters analysis. Many early investors told Reuters they had been hoping for a payday, too.
The company is facing increasing scrutiny from many of its investors who have complained for months about what they allege is the company’s lack of transparency, centralized governance structure, and failure to respond to community complaints, according to Reuters interviews and posts on social media and in the WLF governance forum. Those who purchased tokens off secondary markets would not be affected by the new vesting proposal, although they must agree to lock their tokens for six months if they want to participate in governance votes.
Investors have also complained about the way large wallets have more say in voting decisions and a new “Super Node” investor tier that offers “guaranteed direct access” to the WLF team to those who lock at least $5 million worth of tokens for six months. This privileged tier of token holders appears to undercut WLF’s previous pledge to democratize access to finance.
The investor pique appeared to reach an inflection point last week with the news that World Liberty Financial had borrowed $75 million against its own tokens, enabling the company to extract cash while most of its investors remain barred from selling their assets. Investors on social media and in interviews with Reuters feared that the move by World Liberty could pump more supply into the market even as the token’s price hit an all-time low on April 12 of $0.078.
“We are committed to sound risk management and continuously evaluate our positions and collateral structure,” said Wachsman in response to questions about the loan.
Following the investor fury online, World Liberty Financial said on X on April 10 it had repaid $25 million of the loan.
World Liberty launched one month before the U.S. presidential election, with its executives saying the company would bring crypto to the masses, from teachers and dentists to firemen. In September, early investors were allowed to start trading 20% of their tokens, enabling them to trade some of them on the open market for the first time. At the time, World Liberty said the remaining 80% would be unlocked at a future date.
“Today, World Liberty published a governance proposal that was designed to further align all the participants in the WLFI ecosystem for the long-run,” said Wachsman.
(Michelle Conlin; Editing by Anna Driver)
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