Duke University Scholar: WLFI May Be Issuing Unregistered Securities

According to Odaily, Lee Reiners, a lecturer at Duke University School of Law, stated that the governance token WLFI of World Liberty Financial, which is associated with the Trump family, may constitute an unregistered security.

He pointed out that although the project defines WLFI as a governance token, its issuance method, marketing, and investors' expectations of profit may meet the "Howey Test" criteria used by the U.S. SEC to determine whether an asset is a security.

Additionally, the large-scale pre-sale of WLFI before the protocol went live, coupled with promotion leveraging the Trump brand, is believed to have strengthened its "investment characteristics."