When the Trump family was assembling its crypto venture in 2024, it went looking for credibility. What it found, at least in one notable case, was a polite no.

Nic Carter, a longtime crypto venture capitalist and one of the more respected analytical voices in the space, was approached by Steve Witkoff, a co-founder of World Liberty Financial, about taking on an advisory role. The conversation did not go well.

Carter’s account, shared in a New York magazine feature on World Liberty Financial, is blunt. Witkoff, he said, appeared unfamiliar with foundational crypto and DeFi concepts. “He didn’t know what crypto or DeFi was. He didn’t know what the pitch was,” Carter told the magazine. “I’m like, ‘Oh, okay, so there’s no product. They’re just doing a token.'”

What World Liberty Financial actually is

WLFI launched publicly in September 2024, positioning itself as a decentralized finance platform. Private token sales began in October 2024, with initial prices set as low as $0.015 per token.

The governance token, ticker $WLFI, eventually began public trading on September 1, 2025, following a period of private sales at $0.05 per token in later rounds. The Trump family and affiliated entities are structured to receive 75% of net proceeds from those token sales.

At peak paper valuations, the Trump family’s token holdings were estimated to be worth around $5 billion.

WLFI has also moved to build out an ecosystem. The project announced a USD1 stablecoin, which at times reportedly saw circulation exceeding $3 billion, and outlined plans for a stablecoin-linked debit card scheduled for release in early 2026.

The credibility gap that Carter identified early

Carter has publicly supported Trump, which makes his reservations about WLFI harder to dismiss as partisan noise.

When 75% of net token sale proceeds flow back to the founding family, the incentive to sell the token aggressively is significant, regardless of whether the underlying product ever matures.

What this means for investors watching WLFI

The timing of Carter’s story becoming more widely circulated matters. $WLFI is now publicly traded, meaning retail investors who were not part of the private sale rounds at $0.015 are now entering at market prices set by secondary trading.

The USD1 stablecoin expansion is the more interesting longer-term play, if the numbers hold. A stablecoin with over $3 billion in reported circulation is not trivial; that would place it among the larger stablecoin issuers in a market currently dominated by Tether and Circle’s USDC.

Carter’s decision to pass is a useful reference point, not a verdict. He declined based on a single meeting in 2024, before the stablecoin and debit card roadmap took shape.