Carter Spurns World Liberty Financial Over Lack of Product

Nic Carter, a well-respected crypto analyst and venture capitalist, was approached by Steve Witkoff from World Liberty Financial in 2024 to take on an advisory role. However, the conversation did not go as planned.

Carter's account, shared in a New York magazine feature, is blunt. He stated that Witkoff appeared unfamiliar with foundational crypto and DeFi concepts, saying 'He didn't know what crypto or DeFi was. He didn't know what the pitch was.' Carter's response to this lack of understanding was straightforward: 'Oh, okay, so there's no product. They're just doing a token.'

World Liberty Financial launched publicly in September 2024 as a decentralized finance platform, with private token sales beginning in October 2024 at prices starting from $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.