Open interest in contracts for the Trump family-affiliated World Liberty Financial token approached $1 billion just hours before a partial token unlock.
During early trading on Monday, open interest for derivative contracts of the World Liberty Financial (WLFI) token came close to $950 million before settling at $887 million, which is still a 45% increase over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass.
The trading volume for WLFI derivatives surged over 535% in the last day to reach $4.54 billion, making it the fifth-most traded crypto derivative in the past 24 hours.
Currently, the token trades at approximately 34 cents on most exchanges, down from a peak of more than 40 cents a week ago.
Open interest represents the number of active, outstanding contracts that haven’t been settled, indicating strong interest in WLFI ahead of an unlock of roughly 5% of the token supply occurring in a few hours.
WLFI value could rank among crypto’s top 10
If WLFI continues trading around 34 cents, it could have a fully diluted market value of $34 billion based on its total supply of 100 billion tokens.
This market value would place it as the ninth-largest cryptocurrency, surpassing Tron (TRX) and pushing Dogecoin (DOGE) out of the top 10, both of whose market values are under $32 billion.
Should its price remain steady, WLFI’s market capitalization will be around $1.7 billion based on the roughly 5 billion tokens that are scheduled to be unlocked.
Binance dominates WLFI trades
According to CoinGlass data, the crypto exchange Binance has garnered the largest share of WLFI derivatives trading, accounting for nearly half of the total 24-hour trading volume at $2.22 billion through over 10.5 million trades.
Binance also holds the majority of open interest, with approximately half of the total open interest, or $436.5 million, transacted on its platform.
OKX follows with the next largest share of trades and volume, reporting nearly 1.1 million trades totaling $917.5 million in the past day.
Tokens unlocking on Monday
World Liberty announced on Aug. 22 that it would unlock 20% of the tokens bought by early supporters on Sept. 1 at 8 am New York time (12 pm UTC) after its community voted in mid-July to enable WLFI trading.
Major exchanges such as Kraken and Binance have pledged to list the token for trading. Initially, the tokens were meant to function solely as a governance token for its forthcoming Ethereum-based exchange and lending platform.
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The firm raised $550 million through token sales, which are now ready to unlock. In October, it launched a sale of 20 billion tokens at 1.5 cents each, aiming to raise $300 million, which it successfully sold out by late January, with these tokens available solely to accredited investors in the US.
Following the first sale, another round of token sales commenced, offering 5 billion tokens at $0.05 each—a 230% increase compared to the initial sale, which completed in mid-March and raised $250 million.
US President Donald Trump serves as World Liberty’s “Chief Crypto Advocate,” while sons Barron, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr. are designated as “Web3 Ambassadors.” A company linked to the family receives 75% of the protocol’s revenue.
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