Eric Trump, the son of U.S. President Trump, tweeted this (4th) morning on X: "Now is the time to increase your Ethereum investment, and you can thank me later," which delighted the depressed Ethereum holders, who believed that the son of the U.S. President had finally publicly endorsed Ethereum, which had been abandoned by the market.
However, things are not that simple. Before Eric Trump's call, the DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) dominated by his family was found to have transferred about $300 million worth of various cryptocurrencies to Coinbase Prime in the early hours of today, with Ethereum accounting for $210 million of that, and the coincidence was questioned by the community as an attempt to inflate the price for selling.
Although WLFI later tweeted to clarify that these transfers were for the purpose of fund management and business operations, the community still refused to buy it.
Is the Trump family's DeFi just a scheme?
On the other hand, according to a report by Blockworks yesterday (3rd), citing informed sources, WLFI has been actively seeking "token swap" deals with blockchain projects, with a minimum purchase threshold of $10 million.
But this operation, combined with past actions, led independent researcher Jason Chen to believe that WLFI is running a scheme, and he tweeted last night:
Indeed, I am increasingly feeling that Trump's WLFI project is most likely a scheme. Many people are focused on the "presidential election," thinking that Trump would never let himself lose. He must be playing a big game. So the more Trump loses, the less panicked he is, and he even continues to buy the dips.
Currently, WLFI's token sales have raised $350 million, which can be said to be completely printed out of thin air and spent without any pressure. Now WLFI has only lost a small fraction, after all, only 25% of the total tokens have been sold, and there are still 75% of the tokens to be released.
If all the tokens are sold at the current price of $0.05, a total of $4 billion can be raised! Even if Trump's tokens lose $1 billion, how would that affect the whole pot? It's negligible!
Additionally, some may be curious if WLFI doesn't need to be responsible for token holders. Chen said that WLFI's website has clearly stated that $WLFI is non-transferable, and users should not purchase tokens for speculation or other purposes as investment, which means that WLFI does not need to be responsible for investors (holders):
Some may wonder, doesn't he need to be responsible for his own investors?
Unless it's self-funded, all funds need to set expected returns for their LPs (limited partners) and find ways to make money for the fund. Indeed, many people are used to calling WLFI a Trump family fund project, but the difference between it and other funds is that - it doesn't have the concept of LPs at all, which means there are no so-called investors, so naturally there is no need to be responsible for investors!
At this point, you may be puzzled again: "But even if there are no dedicated LPs, if everyone buys his tokens, isn't it for the purpose of investment and making money?"
Do you see? All those who buy the tokens with real money should not be doing it for the purpose of making money! This is not what I'm saying, it's written in black and white - you buy it, it's your business, but don't expect me to help you make money! Ponder on that.
Furthermore, regarding the "token swap" transactions disclosed by Blockworks, Chen said that WLFI's operation is to let the projects use real money to exchange WLFI's non-transferable "air tokens":
Do you understand? Trump is demanding that the projects use real money to buy his non-transferable air tokens, and then Trump will use the projects' money to buy the projects' tokens...
This reminds me of the movie "A Chinese Ghost Story" where the officials, in order to legitimately accept Ren Xianqi's bribery, would always give Ren a vase every time they had a meal, and the officials would then examine it carefully and say, "This is an antique worth 1 million!"
At this point, Ren Xianqi would say, "Oh, I didn't know! In that case, I'll buy it back for 1 million, is that okay?"
Is WLFI learning from Justin Sun's token transfer tactics?
We know that WLFI had previously hired Tron founder Justin Sun as a project advisor, and today's transfer operation by WLFI was found by the community to be identical to Sun's previous Ethereum transfer operation.
According to monitoring by Spotonchain, Sun has transferred 323,000 Ethereum to the HTX exchange (worth about $1.124 billion) since last November, and many of these transfers were at relatively high prices, which the market unanimously believes was to prepare for selling.
However, Sun has also tweeted multiple times to clarify the selling rumors, stating:
The rumors circulating online about us clearing out ETH are untrue, this is just a transfer of ETH between our different wallets. We remain bullish on the Ethereum ecosystem in the long term.
But the community still doesn't buy Sun's post-peak clarification, repeatedly expressing disbelief. After all, consolidating assets can be transferred to other chain wallets, and if the intention is to hold long-term, transferring to an exchange is clearly not a good choice. (Excluding hedging purposes)
In summary, WLFI used "asset management" as the reason for the large-scale transfer, which the community joked was "a continuation of the same tradition". Researcher Chen also tweeted sarcastically:
The Trump son just called to buy Ethereum, and then immediately transferred all the Ethereum out. Hmm... Sun, why don't you just use your own account to post?
