Trump-linked World Liberty Financial would have ‘raised $1 billion’ as a 2017 ICO, Infinex’s Kain Warwick says

The Block’s Editor-in-Chief Tim Copeland and senior reporter Daniel Kuhn were joined by Infinex Founder Kain Warwick to discuss his new platform and hear his thoughts on the future of the crypto market during episode 8 of The Crypto Beat.

To begin the discussion, Warwick was asked to elaborate on an earlier post he made on X, where he suggested that next year will be “insane.”

Warwick said the past several months of the crypto market resembled “PVP-games,” whereas he expects the crypto market to re-enter the broader spotlight next year. Warwick emphasized that the market has matured, specifically noting the improvements in the onboarding process for those not yet familiar with using cryptocurrencies.

“Next year is going to be wild,” he said.

Many are looking ahead to 2025 for another reason: the inauguration of the next U.S. president. With former President Donald Trump voicing outright support for Bitcoin and crypto, this year’s election has turned crypto into a campaign issue.

“Either we’re going to be saved or we’re all going to jail,” Warwick said, when asked of his opinion on the election, adding that he hopes for a shift away from the Democrats and for “Gensler to be fired on day one.”

When commenting on the recent launch of Trump-linked World Liberty Financial and its lackluster token sale, Warwick said he believed the reason was that the “meta has shifted” away from ICO-style token raises and into memecoins.

“If Trump had been around in 2017 and done World Liberty Financial…the thing would have raised a billion dollars,” Warwick said, noting the overlap between crypto natives and Trump’s core supporters may not be as large as some think, citing the lack of demand. 

Copeland added that the sale’s one-year token lock-up could be part of the explanation for its poor performance, as the norm for holding a token during the market’s present memecoin-mania is significantly shorter than a year, sometimes being just a few hours.

Speaking on the state of decentralized finance, Warwick said there’s “a DeFi renaissance at the moment. All of the DeFi founders are fired up.” 

Warwick, who has a long involvement in the DeFi space as the founder of Synthenix, explained that in the past, DeFi developers were “building for enthusiasts” and that demand has been “tapped out.”

“The barrier to entry is still too high. Infinex is about lowering the barrier to entry,” he said, referring to his new project. Infinex is a DeFi platform that features aspects of chain abstraction to simplify the end-user experience.

“Infinex is about smashing the fence to pieces so that anyone can walk in and play DeFi,” Warwick said.

Warwick added that expecting people to learn about gas fees and private keys is asking too much of normal users, and instead argued that platforms like Infinex are “going to be a huge unlock.”The conversation can be viewed in full here.