Early warnings that Trump’s DeFi project would flop

Donald Trump launched his World Liberty Financial crypto project last night on a live social audio room on X (formerly Twitter). And it was, as some had speculated, a complete flop.

The announcement was made from a room in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort alongside Farokh Sarmad, co-founder of the aptly-named Rug Radio.

Trump had previously previewed the announcement on August 29, and during the following two weeks, many commentators predicted the launch wouldn’t go well.

Indeed, Nic Carter earned over 170,000 views for his plea for Trump to cancel the launch, while CoinDesk linked four World Liberty team members to rugged crypto project Dough Finance. Bloomberg, meanwhile exposed World Liberty marijuana and “get rich quick” course salesman, Chase Herro, who spoke during the social audio space yesterday.

Timeline of the Trump DeFi announcement

The first topic of conversation addressed during the announcement was the recent assassination attempt at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf course. For some time, Farokh and Trump exclusively discussed non-crypto topics.

It wasn’t until the listener tally hit over 170,000 concurrent listeners that the duo finally pivoted to crypto, specifically Trump’s NFT collections.

Incredibly, however, the conversation ended not long after with no mention of World Liberty Financial by Trump.

After a brief intermission — and after Trump had left the room from which Rug Radio was broadcasting — associates and family members joined the conversation. Although Farokh mentioned the project once more, details were few and far between.

Read more: Did Martin Shkreli violate his parole by launching DJT coin with Barron Trump?

More than an hour into the interview and with listeners dwindling to less than 90,000, Trump’s son Donald Jr. revealed that the project would somehow involve real estate.

Another 10,000 concurrent listeners left and Farokh moved on to another family member.

Shortly after, someone mentioned that stablecoins would be somehow involved. Another 5,000 left.

According to Don Jr., all stablecoins are somehow backed by US treasuries.

With less than 75,000 listeners and 90 minutes after the start of the broadcast, Farokh tried to move along to Trump’s youngest son, 18-year-old Baron. However, the teenager had already left.

In short, the launch was an unmitigated disaster. Such a disaster, in fact, World Liberty Financial didn’t even bother to post any details in its Telegram channel.

Just two hours into the meandering show, fewer than 47,000 listeners remained — a 72% decline from its peak above 170,000. By the time someone said World Liberty Financial would issue a “non-transferable” governance token sometime in the future and exclusively to accredited investors, fewer than 40,000 remained.

Nothing happened. No token was launched and few attendees even understood what the project was.

As it turned out, the predictions of a flop came true.

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