Original | Odaily
Author | Golem
In the early hours of today, Trump was sworn in.
What is regrettable for the crypto industry is that Trump did not mention cryptocurrencies in his nearly 1-hour inauguration speech, and in the many executive orders he signed on his first day, he also did not mention Bitcoin or Crypto. This left us who stayed up late to watch Trump's inauguration somewhat disappointed, as if the person who issued the Meme coin TRUMP on the Solana chain a few days ago was not him, and it further aroused people's doubts about the implementation schedule of crypto-friendly policies.
However, there are also people who have vindicated this "crypto president". Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey todaywrote that "it has been confirmed that the executive orders related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies are covered in the first 200 executive orders issued after Trump's inauguration. I don't know exactly what made them eligible, but this is good news."
In addition, the most convincing evidence that Trump will not abandon Crypto may be the DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI), which has deep ties with his family. Yesterday, to celebrate Trump's 47th presidency, World Liberty Financialannounced the purchase of various crypto assets, including ETH, wBTC, Aave, LINK, TRX and ENA, with each token purchased for $47 million or $4.7 million, at a total cost of over $112.8 million (the way rich people celebrate is indeed different).
So, what is the connection between WLFI and the Trump family, why are the tokens they bought jokingly called the "president's selection", and what are the main tokens currently held by WLFI? If you are still unfamiliar with World Liberty Financial or want to follow the "crypto president's token list", Odaily will introduce it in this article.
The Relationship Between World Liberty Financial and the Trump Family
At the end of August, Trump's son Eric Trump announced the launch of the crypto project WLFI on social media. But the project was controversial from the start, including unreasonable token distribution ratios, centralized governance structure, and disclaimers.
The WLFI website shows that WLFI is the only DeFi platform inspired by Trump, using the WLFI token to shape the future of decentralized finance. The small print at the bottom of the website also clearly states the relationship between the Trump family and WLFI.
DT Marks DEFI LLC is an affiliate entity of Trump and some of his family members, owning approximately 60% of the equity in WLF Holdco LLC, which holds the sole membership interest in World Liberty Financial, Inc., a Delaware non-stock corporation that is developing the WLF protocol and operating the WLF governance platform. Pursuant to the terms of an agreement with World Liberty Financial, Inc., WLF Holdco LLC owns all rights to the net protocol revenue of the WLF protocol (excluding the net proceeds from the sale of $WLFI tokens). None of the directors, officers or employees of Trump or his family or the Trump Organization or DT Marks LLC are officers, directors or employees of WLF Holdco LLC or World Liberty Financial, Inc., but Eric Trump is a manager on the board of WLF Holdco LLC. DT Marks DEFI LLC and certain of Trump's family members also hold 22.5 billion $WLFI tokens, and DT Marks DEFI LLC is entitled to receive a fee from World Liberty Financial, Inc. pursuant to a services agreement, which is equal to 75% of the $WLFI token sale proceeds, net of agreed reserves, expenses and other amounts.
It can be seen that although the Trump family is not directly managing WLFI, they have indirectly controlled the project through equity, and can legally obtain 75% of WLFI's revenue, so it is not unreasonable to classify WLFI as one of the Trump family's projects.
Although it initially encountered FUD, it did not stop the development of the WLFI project. On January 20, WLFI announced that it had successfully sold 20% of the $WLFI tokens, i.e. 20 billion tokens, at a public offering price of $0.05, raising a total of $1 billion. This public offering round will run from October 15, 2024 to the end, a period of about 3 months. After completing the original 20% token sales target, due to strong market demand, WLFI also announced an additional 5% token sales, and as of now, a total of 21.6 billion $WLFI tokens have been sold.
Overview of World Liberty Financial's Main Holdings
Due to its close relationship with the Trump family, and now that Trump has moved into the White House, WLFI's purchase and holding of any crypto asset will be seen as a potential positive, bringing the "American attribute" label. So what are the main holdings of WLFI now?
As shown in the figure, the largest holding of WLFI is ETH, accounting for 61%. Previously, due to the fact that Trump's personal Meme token TRUMP was issued on the Solana chain rather than Ethereum, coupled with the long-term sluggishness of ETH prices, social media was flooded with many practices of shorting Ethereum and switching to holding SOL, such as "the US president is issuing tokens on the Solana chain, and you are still holding Ethereum?" But WLFI's subsequent continuous purchase of ETH took many people by surprise.
At the same time, TRX is also quite prominent in the holdings. On January 20, WLFI spent $4.7 million to purchase the TRON token TRX, which was WLFI's first investment in a Chinese project. If you dig deeper, you will find that the relationship between WLFI and TRON TRON is not simple. As early as November 26, 2024, TRON founder Justin Sunannounced a $30 million investment in the Trump family's crypto project WLFI, becoming its largest investor, and he later joined WLFI as an advisor. In addition, a TRON representative was also invited to attend the presidential inauguration on January 20.
In addition, the ENA project Ethena Labs had previously reached a cooperation with WLFI.
The WLFI holdings list has already become a "Trump Loyalist List", and projects that have cooperation or close relationships with it will be honored to be included. From on-chain data, WLFI has also previously made small purchases of UNI and POL, and it is unknown whether there will be any linkage with WLFI in the future.
Although WLFI's large-scale purchase activities will bring short-term FOMO to the corresponding tokens, in the long run, it still depends on the substantive cooperation situation and whether Trump can quickly implement crypto-friendly policies.
