Nic Carter passed on World Liberty Financial after concluding it had no real product

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 entit...