Buying back WLFI will be “an ongoing part of our long-term strategy”, the Trump family-backed crypto company World Liberty Financial said in a post on X reported by CoinDesk on 6 November. The WLFI buyback may be paid for partly with fees earned on the reserves behind its USD1 stablecoin, plus other sources the company did not list. It gave no amount, no start date and no schedule, and no governance vote on the plan has been published.
The announcement came as the token slid. CoinDesk counted a loss of about 10% since Tuesday 3 November, the day of the US midterm elections, and of more than 66% since the start of the year.
For the company itself, its products and its owners, see our World Liberty Financial project page. This piece covers only the new buyback and what it leaves open.
What World Liberty said about the WLFI buyback
According to CoinDesk’s account of the post, the pace and size of the purchases will depend on how the ecosystem grows and on how many holders take part in governance. The stated aim is to encourage holders to vote and to move voting power toward committed, long-term holders.
Crypto Briefing, which also reported the post, adds two points. The programme starts with “initial allocations from several sources”, of which only the USD1 reserve fees are named, and buyback activity will be reported publicly. The same report quotes the project as saying the buybacks aim to “reward long-term stakeholders, not to fuel short-term trading”.
The wording quoted here is taken from those two reports. They do not agree on the day: Crypto Briefing’s page is stamped 5 November, 20:50 US Eastern time, yet its text dates the announcement to 6 November, the day CoinDesk published (08:04 UTC).
No size, no date, no vote: what WLFI did not disclose
The post reads as a statement of intent. Set against what a reader would need to judge it, most of the numbers are missing:
- No dollar amount or token count for the new programme, and no cap.
- No start date and no frequency (daily, weekly or one-off purchases).
- No figure for the fees that USD1 reserves earn, or for the share of those fees that would go to buybacks.
- No list of the other funding sources mentioned in the post.
- No word on whether bought tokens will be burned, as in 2025, or held by the treasury.
- No governance proposal: no new proposal or forum post had appeared by 7 November, so it is not known whether holders will vote on it.
- No format for the promised public reports: where they will appear, and how often.
The burn question matters for the stated goal. A burned token cannot vote, so burning raises the share of votes held by everyone who keeps their tokens. Tokens kept by the treasury would weigh only if treasury holdings take part in votes. The company has not said which route it will take.
The USD1 link is also new. The 2025 programme was funded by trading fees on the company’s own liquidity pools. Tying buybacks to the income of a stablecoin’s reserves means the size of the purchases would depend on how much USD1 is in circulation and on what those reserves earn, two figures the announcement does not give.
Earlier WLFI buybacks: a 2025 vote and $65.6 million by April 2026
This is not the first WLFI buyback. In September 2025, holders approved a proposal to send 100% of the fees earned by the protocol-owned liquidity on Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana to open-market WLFI purchases, with the tokens sent to a burn address. Fees earned by outside liquidity providers were excluded. The vote ended on 19 September 2025 with 99.85% in favour, about 4.4 billion votes for and 2.6 million against, according to Coinchapter.
Crypto Briefing reports that several buybacks followed in late 2025, including one of about $10 million that bought around 59 million WLFI. Then, in April 2026, the company disclosed $65.6 million of open-market buybacks over the previous six months, CoinDesk recalls.
| Date | What happened | Size | Reported by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Sept 2025 | Vote to use 100% of protocol-owned liquidity fees for buy-and-burn | 99.85% in favour | Coinchapter |
| Late 2025 | One of several buybacks | About $10M for about 59M WLFI | Crypto Briefing |
| April 2026 | Disclosure of open-market buybacks over six months | $65.6M | CoinDesk |
| 6 Nov 2026 | Ongoing buybacks, partly funded by USD1 reserve fees | Not disclosed | CoinDesk, Crypto Briefing |
The 2025 vote was a governance decision with a clear funding rule. The November announcement has neither a vote nor a rule so far. How WLFI votes work, and who holds the weight in them, is explained in our guide to governance tokens; how burns and buybacks fit in a token’s supply is covered under tokenomics.
WLFI price near $0.046 after the midterm slide
WLFI traded at about $0.0464 around 12:20 UTC on Saturday 7 November, according to CoinGecko’s page, read at that time (the page shows no time stamp of its own). It was down 1.00% over 24 hours and 7.50% over seven days, with a market value of about $1.47 billion. CoinGecko counts about 31.78 billion tokens in circulation out of a supply of 100 billion, and lists an all-time high of $0.3313 (the page gives no date for it). At $0.0464, that puts the token about 86% below its peak.
CoinDesk tied the latest drop to Republicans doing worse than expected in the midterms, the same week the TRUMP memecoin and Trump Media shares hit record lows. What the election result means for crypto bills in Congress is in our report on Elizabeth Warren’s likely return at the head of Senate Banking.
Coindaro does not assess whether the buybacks will move the price, and the company has not said how much it will spend.
Justin Sun’s sanctions motion, filed the same week
Earlier that week, Justin Sun opened a new front in his lawsuit. The Tron founder, who sued World Liberty in April in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, filed a motion on Monday 2 November asking Judge James Donato to sanction the company and its lawyers, Bitcoin.com News reports. Sun announced it on X the next day, as The Block reported on 3 November. The frozen holding is put at roughly 4 billion WLFI by CoinDesk and at about 2.9 billion by Bitcoin.com News. Sun says he invested $45 million in WLFI.
The motion turns on ownership. According to Sun, the company first told the court it had a single citizenship, Florida, then later listed 22 members in its ownership chain, with ties to Florida, Delaware, Puerto Rico and the United Arab Emirates. World Liberty now argues that the federal court lacks jurisdiction because of its UAE citizenship. Sun’s side says the company should have disclosed this from the start.
The sum sought is $263,821.20, according to Cointelegraph and Bitcoin.com News: the fees of four lawyers, from the firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel per Bitcoin.com News, who fought the company’s bid to send Sun’s claims to arbitration. Both outlets report a hearing set for 10 December. Donato had already questioned that arbitration push at a hearing on 20 August. Once the motion is decided, Sun plans to refile in California state court. The company did not answer Cointelegraph’s request for comment. In May it sued Sun for defamation in Florida state court; Sun called that suit a “meritless PR stunt”. None of these claims has been tested by a ruling.
It was filed ten days after a Circle shareholder sued Trump and World Liberty over UAE money in USD1, a separate case.
What to watch next
The first public buyback report is the next test, if the company publishes one: it would give the first figure for the new programme and show whether the tokens are burned. A governance proposal on the WLFI portal would settle the question of a vote. On the court side, the 10 December hearing reported by Cointelegraph and Bitcoin.com News is the next fixed date in Sun’s case.
In Europe, neither the AMF, Consob nor ESMA had commented on the announcement by midday on 7 November.