Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010)
As Trump successfully elected (Time Magazine's Person of the Year) and graced the cover on December 12, the Trump effect in the cryptocurrency market continues. Recently, the crypto project WLFI (World Liberty), backed by the Trump family, has brought a new wave of attention to the diverse tokens in the market. After acquiring a series of mainstream coins, infrastructure project tokens, and RWA tokens, the project officially announced its collaboration with Ethena Labs around 2 AM on the 19th, planning to integrate Ethena's yield token sUSDe into the WLFI lending platform.
Odaily Planet Daily will summarize WLFI's recent operations and their implications for reference.
WLFI has been active recently: purchasing ENA, ONDO, etc.
At around 4 AM yesterday, according to Onchain Lens monitoring, Trump's family crypto project WLFI (World Liberty) spent another 250,000 USDC to purchase 231,726 ENA, bringing its ENA holdings up to 741,687, with a total cost of $750,000. Additionally, it converted 103 cbBTC worth $10.36 million into WBTC.
On December 16, WLFI spent 250,000 USDC to purchase 134,216 ONDO.
On December 15, WLFI spent 500,013 USDC to purchase 509,955 ENA at an average price of $0.981.
On December 13, WLFI spent 1 million USDC to buy 37,052 LINK and 151,985 USDC to buy 422 AAVE; within 48 hours, the project cumulatively spent 10 million USDC to buy 2,631 ETH; spent 1,246,722 USDC to buy 4,043 AAVE; and spent 2 million USDC to buy 78,387 LINK.
On December 12, according to Arkham's monitoring, WLFI's multi-signature address held 14,573 ETH (approximately $57.03 million), 102.9 cbBTC (approximately $10.38 million), 3.108 million USDT, 1.515 million USDC, 41,335 LINK (approximately $1.17 million), 3,357 AAVE (approximately $1.16 million), and other cryptocurrencies. Notably, on that day, the project had just exchanged a large amount of stablecoins from token sales for ETH, with its ETH holdings valued at over $50 million at that time.
As previously shared by on-chain analyst Ai Yi, the non-stablecoin assets purchased by WLFI include LINK / AAVE / ENA / ONDO, half belonging to DeFi leading applications and half belonging to RWA assets. Interestingly, although COW is not part of World Liberty's portfolio, due to the recent on-chain token purchases using Cowswap, its token price has surged nearly 93% in the past week, and this driving effect is also reflected in the other tokens it has purchased.
On December 14, after purchasing LINK and AAVE, WLFI's holdings in the former had an unrealized profit of $299,000, while the latter had an unrealized profit of $338,000.
On December 16, after news of WLFI's purchases spread, ONDO broke through 2.1 USDT, reaching a historic high with a 24-hour increase of 16.33%.
On December 16, driven by news of WLFI's purchases of various tokens, COW broke through $1, reaching a historical high; the price of ENA rose to $1.33, less than $0.2 away from its previous historical high.
If BTC's price previously surged from $70,000 to break the $100,000 mark due to the 'Trump effect,' then undoubtedly, WLFI's held tokens have also been influenced by this effect.
After all, in the eyes of cryptocurrency traders in the United States and around the world, WLFI is the 'Trump signature project.'
WLFI current holding statistics: AAVE, COW
From the end of November to December 19, after achieving the $30 million token sales target, WLFI's previous token acquisition operations included——
- $30 million USDC to purchase 8,105 ETH; - $10 million USDC to purchase 103 cbBTC (which has been converted to WBTC); - $2 million USDC to purchase 78,387 LINK; - $1.91 million USDC to purchase 6,137 AAVE; - $750,000 USDC to purchase 741,687 ENA; - $250,000 USDC to purchase 134,216 ONDO.
According to on-chain data site Arkham, the current holding situation of the WLFI project is as follows:
14,800 ETH, worth $54.89 million;
103 WBTC, worth $10.45 million;
6,137 AAVE, worth $2.12 million;
78,300 LINK, worth $1.95 million;
740,000 ENA, worth $860,000;
134,000 ONDO, worth $256,000.
Stablecoin (USDT + USDC) holdings are approximately $10 million.
Currently, the total value of assets in this multi-signature address is around $80.56 million.
WLFI token holding information (as of December 19, 5 PM)
The difficult growth path of WLFI: from a target of $300 million to barely gathering $30 million
Looking back at WLFI's growth journey, it is also difficult to say it has been smooth sailing.
At the end of August, Eric Trump, the second son of Trump and the current executive vice president of the Trump Organization, announced the official launch of the crypto project WLFI (@WorldLibertyFi), aiming to create a new financial era. Notably, after Trump's victory in the presidential election in early November, insiders revealed that this project was established due to insufficient funding during Trump's presidential campaign.
After inviting a number of prominent figures, including the CEO of Paxos, the founder of Tomo Wallet, the CEO of Mixie Studios Mixie Media, and co-founders of Glue, and after experiencing a series of market skepticism and other setbacks, on October 15, the WLFI project token presale finally commenced as scheduled.
Despite achieving a remarkable result of 'raising $5 million within an hour of presale,' the market response was not ideal, affected by issues such as KYC certification, website outages, and previous project token distribution ratios. According to media reports, the roadmap shows that WLFI's initial sale aims to raise $300 million, selling 20% of the token supply at a $1.5 billion FDV.
Until October 17, according to Lookonchain's monitoring, WLFI sold 83,373 million tokens, with sales exceeding $12.5 million; over 10,000 users participated in the token sale, with address 0x2d24 spending 351.3 ETH ($903,000) to purchase 60.43 million WLFI, becoming the largest buyer.
Subsequently, according to a 13-page document titled 'World Liberty Gold Paper' from the project, the Trump family will receive 75% of the project's net profits while bearing no responsibility.
The news caused a stir.
Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, Jehan Chu, co-founder and managing partner of Kenetic Capital, and Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, respectively raised questions, provided evaluations, and offered suggestions from their perspectives.
At the beginning of November, WLFI reduced its fundraising target by 90%, planning to sell only $30 million worth of WLFI tokens instead of the initially planned $300 million.
On November 20, WLFI sold approximately 1.35 billion tokens, generating sales of $20,283,014, approximately 68% of its adjusted fundraising target.
Just when many thought the project had hit a dead end and even achieving the $30 million target was difficult, someone stepped in.
On November 26, Sun Yuchen announced a $30 million investment in Trump's family crypto project WLFI, becoming its largest investor. He also stated that the United States is becoming the center of blockchain, thanks to Trump's support for Bitcoin. Subsequently, he joined WLFI as an advisor.
I personally speculate that this is also the reason behind WLFI's recent exchange of cbBTC for WBTC.
As for the purchase of AAVE and LINK tokens, it is also related to previous collaborations——
On November 14, WLFI officially announced that they would adopt the Chainlink standard for on-chain data and cross-chain connections, serving as a secure method to bring DeFi into the next phase of mass adoption.
On December 13, WLFI's community initiated the first community proposal to 'deploy an Aave v3 instance for the WLFI protocol,' which was ultimately approved. It is understood that this instance will be managed by external risk managers and will be built on the existing Aave v3 infrastructure, ultimately launching on the Ethereum mainnet.
As a result, WLFI successfully 'stayed at the table' and is now expected to become 'the barometer of cryptocurrency in the United States.'
Conclusion: WLFI will continue to be active in the US crypto market, becoming a 'crypto banner.'
According to a previous analysis, WLFI's action of exchanging stablecoins for ETH indicates that the project is seeking to participate in a deeper level of the crypto economy. This may also suggest that the team believes ETH is a better reserve asset than the US dollar. Notably, this trading operation was first recognized by renowned Ethereum investor and advisor Eric Conner.
As previously mentioned, 75% of the net proceeds from WLFI's presale will be received by the Trump family, without bearing any responsibility. The document also emphasizes that Trump and his family members are not directors, employees, managers, or operators of WLFI or its affiliates and states that the project and tokens 'are not related to any political activities.' The remaining 25% of the net agreement income will belong to Axiom Management Group (AMG), a Puerto Rico company wholly owned by project co-founders Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman. AMG has agreed to allocate half of its profit rights to Trump's close friend and political donor Steve Witkoff and related companies of some of his family members, WC Digital Fi.
In this regard, WLFI may become the subsequent 'crypto banner' of the Trump faction, leveraging trading operations to deeply collaborate with more crypto projects to promote the development of the US crypto economy; on the other hand, the project will also provide certain financial support for Trump and his faction members, facilitating various personal and political actions during their future governance.
Around WLFI, a core group promoting the development of the US crypto economy may emerge, and the project is expected to become Trump's 'crypto Huangpu Military Academy.'
Recommended reading: (Who are the decision-makers behind Trump's project WLFI that is aggressively buying crypto assets?)
