There's an interesting historical detail just been revealed. According to newly released internal notes, Elon Musk briefly supported a plan for OpenAI to raise about $1 billion through an ICO in early 2018. From the phone recordings, Musk did agree to this plan at the time, but soon changed his mind, reasoning that he believed OpenAI wouldn't be able to raise enough funds this way, and he eventually left the project.

This incident reflects a very intriguing phenomenon. During 2017 to 2018, the ICO craze was at its peak, and even tech giants like Musk were seriously considering token-based fundraising. The crypto market atmosphere back then was indeed different; token sales were hyped to the extreme, and many startups wanted to capitalize on this wave for quick funding. But later, increased regulatory scrutiny and market volatility caused the enthusiasm for ICOs to gradually cool down.

Musk's final decision, in fact, paved the way for what OpenAI is today. His departure allowed the organization to adopt its current hybrid structure, combining features of both for-profit companies and non-profit organizations. Interestingly, even figures like Musk were contemplating tokenized financing back then, which shows how vast the imagination space around crypto and blockchain was at that time.

Speaking of crypto fundraising, I recently came across another case. The WLFI token of World Liberty Financial recently dropped to its lowest point since its launch in 2025, with a decline of 12%. Its current price is $0.08, and it continues to fall by another 5.82% in the past 24 hours. This Trump-related crypto project drew attention because of a controversial lending strategy on the Dolomite DeFi platform, where the company admitted to using its governance tokens as collateral to borrow stablecoins. This approach clearly unsettled investors.

Comparing the idealism of the Musk coin concept in that era with the practical issues WLFI faces today, you can see the entire evolution of crypto fundraising from a craze to reality. The dreams of ICOs back then and the current token economy reality are indeed separated by a huge gap.