Mockery from the California Governor
The California Governor is clearly not buying it.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is planning to launch "Trump Corruption Coin" as a direct response to Trump's involvement in the crypto space.
He stated: The planned Meme coin is explicitly named after Trump's alleged scandals and is part of his broader "Democratic Movement" initiative. The proceeds from this Meme coin will be used for redistricting and voter advocacy work.
"We just want to increase the pressure and make people realize how absurd this is. He is one of the biggest frauds of our time. None of this is normal."
Over the past week, the California Governor also used his official news office account on platform X to mimic Trump's signature all-caps tweet: "EXCEPT WHAT IS WRITTEN AND BROADCAST IN THE FAKE NEWS, I NOW HAVE THE HIGHEST POLL NUMBERS I’VE EVER HAD, SOME IN THE 60’S AND EVEN 70’S. THANK YOU. MAKE AMERICA GAVIN AGAIN!!! — GCN."
He also opened an online store selling "Make America Great Again"-style merchandise, including red hats labeled "NEWSOM WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!"

Short-Term Speculators Are in Position
Data from CoinGlass shows that during early trading on Monday, the open interest value of WLFI token derivative contracts was nearly $950 million, later dropping to $887 million but still up 45% over the past 24 hours. Trading volume for WLFI derivatives surged over 535% in the past day to $4.54 billion, making it the fifth-largest crypto derivative by trading volume in the last 24 hours. The token is trading at around 34 cents on most exchanges, down from its peak of over 40 cents a week ago.
Open interest refers to the number of active, unsettled contracts, indicating strong investor interest in WLFI as about 5% of the token supply unlocks in a few hours.
If WLFI's price remains around 34 cents, its fully diluted market capitalization could reach $34 billion based on its total supply of 100 billion tokens. This total market cap would make it the ninth-largest cryptocurrency.
Prediction market Myriad shows that over 77% of speculators are betting that WLFI's first-day price will be above $0.20.

Institutional Investors Are Still Watching
On June 26, WLFI co-founder Zak Folkman stated at the crypto industry conference "Permissionless" that several publicly traded companies have "strong interest" in the platform and intend to use its token, WLFI, as a corporate reserve asset.

However, since then, only ALT5 Sigma Corporation announced on August 11 a $1.5 billion registered direct offering and concurrent private placement to fund the treasury strategy of World Liberty Financial (WLFI). There are not many large institutions interested in WLFI: B2C2 Group has invested a cumulative $80 million in WLFI; Aqua1 Fund subscribed to $80 million worth of WLFI tokens... No news has emerged of top crypto institutions like Grayscale or Ark Capital entering WLFI. Even a company owned by Trump lacks confidence in WLFI: in June, it reduced its stake in WLFI from 60% to 40%.