coindesk.com
Futures of World Liberty Financial ($WLFI), the cryptocurrency linked to the family of President Donald Trump, lost more than 44% of their value on opening this weekend as traders chose to short the decentralized finance (DeFi) token.
The futures began trading Aug. 23 on decentralized exchange Hyperliquid at $0.44. Within hours, the price had collapsed to below $0.25 on the back of significant trading volume.
The debut followed months of uncertainty. Initially, the token was planned to be non-transferrable. In mid-July, however, the measure was overturned. That decision paved the way for the weekend introduction. Spot trading and token distribution are due to go live in September.
The current price would put $WLFI at a fully diluted value of $24 billion having debuted at around $44 billion, based on the token's total supply of 100 billion.
More than $59 million in trading volume has been recorded, with $57 million in open interest, according to HyperLiquid. Open interest measures the nominal amount of open positions on a specific market.
The funding rate is also skewed to the downside at an annualized rate of -35%. When negative rates occur, traders holding short positions need to pay those holding longs, a classic bearish signal.
Negative funding rates have been rare of late in the crypto market despite major assets like BTC and ETH selling off. $WLFI's negative rate demonstrates how traders believe the token is overvalued and are so confident in further downside that they are willing to pay to hold the short position.