Founder of Trump's World Liberty Financial Credits Justin Sun for Project's Success

HONG KONG — World Liberty Financial, the Donald Trump-backed crypto project, owes much of its early success to Justin Sun, the Chinese-born crypto billionaire who became an official advisor to the project after purchasing $30 million worth of its token, $WLFI, said World Liberty co-founder Zak Folkman.

Folkman remarked that, "the goal of the project is being able to create progress to actually merge traditional financial institutions with decentralized finance,” in a panel at CoinDesk's Consensus Hong Kong conference.

For several weeks, the Trump-endorsed $WLFI faced lackluster sales, failing to reach its $30 million fundraising target. The token was restricted from trading and only available to non-U.S. investors and accredited U.S. investors.

The project's fortunes changed, however, when Sun stepped in. “This guy,” Folkman said with a gesture towards Sun, “saw that regardless of the outcome, this project is a monumental move forward for the entire crypto community.”

When Trump announced World Liberty Financial alongside his sons in October, they said it would be a lending platform based on Aave — a popular Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol. The platform has yet to launch, but according to Folkman, World Liberty is now developing "a whole range of products and applications" — not just a single tool.

Today, World Liberty Financial is known for $WLFI, the governance token that it put up for sale mere days after the project was unveiled.

"When we were launching this project, it was a very heated time," Folkman told the panel. "There was a lot of scrutiny on our project due to who was involved."

After Sun's 10-figure endorsement, “everything kind of snowballed from there,” said Folkman. World Liberty not only oversold its fundraising target, but it eventually set a new one. Should it meet its new goal — which it seems poised to do soon — Folkman noted that $WLFI will become the fourth-largest initial coin offering (ICO) of all time.

Folkman claims $WLFI's success came despite "no VC backing and no special treatment to anybody who purchased the token."

Sun, however, was elevated to an official World Liberty investor after his $WLFI purchase. World Liberty also bought $10 million worth of TRX tokens — the native token of Sun's TRON blockchain — and WBTC, a Sun-linked bitcoin derivative.

Earlier in Feb., Blockworks reported that World Liberty has been shopping a deal to crypto teams: If a company purchases $WLFI tokens and pays an additional fee, World Liberty will add that company's tokens to its portfolio — a powerful marketing instrument for up-and-coming crypto tokens.

“I’ve seen that going around," Folkman said of the report. "The person who was going out and purporting to represent us was not connected with our company.”