Trump-Linked Crypto Platform Throws Over $70M on WBTC, ETH, Other Tokens Ahead of Inauguration

The buying frenzy came after WLFI token sales picked up ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration.

Jan 20, 2025, 3:45 p.m. UTC

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the decentralized finance platform linked to Donald Trump and his family, purchased millions of dollars of cryptocurrencies in a buying frenzy on Monday hours before Trump's inauguration ceremony.

The protocol's wallet address bought over $23.5 million of wrapped bitcoin (BTC), $29 million of Ethereum's ETH, $4.4 million of AAVE and $4.5 million of Tron's TRX, blockchain data by Arkham Intelligence shows. The address also purchased $4.5 million of Ethena and $5.5 million of Chainlink's LINK in over a dozen transactions through decentralized exchange CoW.

The transactions happened as sales of the protocol's governance token WLFI picked up over the past few days after a lackluster launch last October. Over 21.7 billion of tokens ($1.08 billion) have been sold as of Monday morning, over 85% of the total 25 billion supply.

World Liberty Financial is spearheaded by Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, who worked previously on DeFi platform Dough Finance, which saw $2 million of crypto assets drained through a July exploit. Members of the Trump family, including Donald Trump, publicly championed the project on social media, with the former president being titled as "Chief Crypto Advocate." for the platform. Two of his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., are involved as "Web3 Ambassadors," while his other son Barron Trump is listed as "DeFi Visionary."