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 purchased over $47 million in wrapped bitcoin (BTC), $47 million in ETH from Ethereum, $4.4 million in AAVE, and $4.5 million in Tron’s TRX, according to Arkham Intelligence blockchain data. The address also purchased $4.5 million worth of ENA from Ethena and $5.5 million worth of LINK from Chainlink in over a dozen transactions via decentralized exchange CoW.
The transactions came as sales of the WLFI protocol’s governance token have resumed in recent days following a lackluster launch last October. More than 21.7 billion tokens ($1.08 billion) were sold as of Monday morning, more than 85% of the total supply of 25 billion, according to the website.
World Liberty Financial is led by Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, who previously worked on DeFi platform Dough Finance, which saw $2 million in crypto assets drained thanks to a July exploit. Members of the Trump family, including Donald Trump, have publicly defended the project on social media, with the new president being titled “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 a “DeFi visionary.”
UPDATE (January 20, 5:20 p.m. UTC): Updates token purchase tally with latest wBTC and ETH acquisitions.
