Surge in Open Interest for World Liberty Financial Token
Open interest in contracts related to the World Liberty Financial token, which is linked to the Trump family, approached $1 billion just hours before a partial token unlock.
On Monday morning, open interest in derivative contracts for the World Liberty Financial (WLFI) token was close to $950 million, subsequently settling at $887 million. This still reflects a remarkable 45% increase over the past 24 hours, as reported by CoinGlass.
The trading volume for WLFI derivatives has soared more than 535% in the last day, reaching $4.54 billion, making it the fifth most actively traded crypto derivative during that period.
The token is currently trading at around 34 cents across most exchanges, having dropped from a high of over 40 cents a week prior.
Open interest represents the number of active, outstanding contracts that have yet to be settled, indicating strong interest in WLFI ahead of the impending unlock of approximately 5% of the token supply, which is expected in just a few hours.
If WLFI maintains its price around 34 cents, the token could achieve a fully diluted market value of $34 billion, based on its total supply of 100 billion tokens.
At this valuation, it would become the ninth-largest cryptocurrency, surpassing Tron (TRX) and dethroning Dogecoin (DOGE) from the top 10, as both these cryptocurrencies have market values below $32 billion.
Should its price remain stable, WLFI’s market capitalization will be approximately $1.7 billion, considering the 5 billion tokens slated for unlocking.
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According to CoinGlass data, the largest share of WLFI derivatives trading has occurred on the Binance exchange, accounting for about half of the total 24-hour trading volume at $2.22 billion, with over 10.5 million trades executed.
Binance also holds a substantial portion of open interest, with around half of the total open interest, or $436.5 million, channeled through its platform.
OKX reported the second-largest number of trades and volume, with close to 1.1 million trades contributing $917.5 million over the past day.
World Liberty announced on August 22 that it would unlock 20% of the tokens acquired by its early supporters on September 1 at 8 am New York time (12 pm UTC), following a community vote in mid-July to enable WLFI trading.
A number of major exchanges, including Kraken and Binance, have stated they will list the token for trading. Initially, the tokens were designed solely to function as a governance token for its forthcoming Ethereum-based exchange and lending platform.
The firm secured $550 million through token sales, which are now set to unlock. In October, it initiated a sale of 20 billion tokens at 1.5 cents each, raising $300 million, which was fully subscribed by late January as the tokens were exclusively available to accredited investors in the US.
After the completion of the first sale, the company swiftly launched another round, offering 5 billion tokens at $0.05 each—a 230% increase from the initial sale price. This second round was finalized in mid-March, raising $250 million.
US President Donald Trump is designated as World Liberty’s “Chief Crypto Advocate,” while his sons Barron, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr. are referred to as “Web3 Ambassadors.” A company associated with the family receives 75% of the protocol’s revenues.
