World Liberty Financial is tokenizing loan revenue interests in Trump's Maldives resort with Securitize. Accredited investors get fixed yield plus exposure to a 100-villa luxury property.
WLFI Tokenizes Trump Maldives Resort with Securitize
World Liberty Financial announced plans to tokenize loan revenue interests in Trump International Hotel & Resort, Maldives, partnering with Securitize and DarGlobal to structure the offering. The resort is a 100-villa luxury development scheduled for completion in 2030, and the tokenized product will give accredited investors exposure to both fixed yield and loan revenue streams tied to the property's performance.
The announcement came during the World Liberty Forum at Mar-a-Lago on February 18, the same event where WLFI revealed its collaboration with Apex Group to pilot the USD1 stablecoin for fund operations. Eric Trump, co-founder of WLFI, framed the tokenization as the first step in bringing world-class real estate assets on-chain, offering eligible participants fractional access to iconic properties.
The structure itself is worth unpacking. This isn't equity tokenization. Investors aren't buying ownership in the resort. They're buying tokenized interests in loan revenues—essentially a debt instrument that pays fixed yield and gives exposure to income distributions and potential profits if the property is sold in the future. That structure keeps the offering within a regulated securities framework while still providing upside participation.
Securitize is handling the issuance and compliance infrastructure. The firm manages over $4 billion in tokenized real-world assets as of November 2025 and operates as an SEC-registered broker-dealer, transfer agent, and Alternative Trading System. It's also authorized as an investment firm under the EU DLT Pilot Regime, making it one of the few platforms licensed to operate regulated digital securities infrastructure across both the US and EU.
Carlos Domingo, Securitize's co-founder and CEO, said real estate has been one of the hardest asset classes to tokenize effectively. The challenge isn't technical—it's regulatory and structural. Real estate involves complex ownership structures, local laws, tax considerations, and illiquidity that don't translate cleanly to tokenized formats. Securitize's pitch is that by issuing tokens with compliance, governance, and market structure baked in from the start, the product can scale globally.
The tokens will be offered under Rule 506(c) of Regulation D, which allows general solicitation but restricts sales to verified accredited investors. That means the offering can be marketed publicly, but only people who meet the income or net worth thresholds can participate. Non-US persons can also participate through Regulation S offshore transactions.
The tokens won't be registered with the SEC, which means they're subject to significant restrictions on transfer and resale. You can't just list them on a public exchange. Secondary trading will likely happen through Securitize's ATS or other approved platforms, but liquidity will be limited compared to publicly traded securities.
WLFI also plans to enable the tokens to be used as collateral within its lending product, WLFI Markets, where permitted by law. That's the same infrastructure Coinbase uses for its Morpho-backed lending product—depositing tokenized assets into DeFi protocols to unlock liquidity without selling. If that functionality goes live, token holders could borrow stablecoins against their Maldives resort exposure, creating a secondary use case beyond just holding for yield.
The resort itself is being developed by DarGlobal, a London Stock Exchange-listed luxury real estate firm that specializes in high-end projects across global cities. DarGlobal has partnered with over ten luxury brands, including Trump Organization, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Fendi, and Pagani. The Maldives project is one of several Trump-branded developments in DarGlobal's portfolio.
The Trump Organization isn't issuing the tokens and doesn't have a direct economic interest in the offering beyond the trademark licensing agreement. However, DT Marks Defi LLC—an entity affiliated with Donald Trump and his family—holds approximately 38% beneficial ownership in an affiliate of the issuer, which entitles it to a portion of proceeds from the token sale. That structure keeps Trump-related entities financially aligned with the success of the offering without making them the direct issuers.
The broader context here is that WLFI is positioning itself as a platform for tokenizing real-world assets, not just a DeFi protocol. The company's stated strategy is to design, structure, and distribute WLFI-branded tokenized offerings across multiple asset classes—real estate, infrastructure, potentially other categories. The Maldives resort is the first, but the press release frames it as the beginning of a pipeline.
Whether that pipeline materializes depends on several factors. First, investor appetite. Tokenized real estate offerings have struggled to gain traction historically, partly because liquidity is limited and partly because the regulatory complexity makes them less attractive than simply buying publicly traded REITs or direct property. If the Maldives offering sells out quickly and secondary trading develops, it validates the model. If it sits unsold or trades at a discount to net asset value, the thesis weakens.
Second, regulatory clarity. The Trump administration has been openly supportive of crypto and tokenization, which could accelerate regulatory approvals for future offerings. WLFI has filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank for stablecoin operations, which suggests the firm is serious about building regulated infrastructure rather than operating in gray areas.
Third, execution risk. The resort is scheduled for completion in 2030, four years out. Construction delays, cost overruns, or changes in local regulations could impact the asset's performance, which would flow through to token holders. Investors are taking development risk, not just operational risk.
The token offering also raises questions about valuations. How is the loan revenue interest priced? What's the expected yield? What happens if the property doesn't generate the projected cash flows? The press release doesn't provide those details—they'll likely be disclosed in the private placement memorandum distributed to prospective investors. But those are the numbers that determine whether this is a compelling investment or just an expensive way to get exposure to a branded resort.
What's clear is that WLFI is moving quickly to execute its RWA strategy. Within two days, the firm announced a partnership with Apex Group to pilot USD1 for fund operations and unveiled its first tokenized real estate offering. That's aggressive pacing for a company that only launched its governance token in October 2024.
Whether the market responds positively will depend on execution, transparency, and whether institutional capital sees tokenized loan revenue interests as a meaningful innovation or just a repackaging of existing debt structures with blockchain buzzwords attached. But the infrastructure is real, the partners are credible, and the regulatory framework is being built. The Trump Maldives resort tokenization is either the beginning of a new asset class or an expensive experiment. Time will tell which.