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Trump’s Crypto Project Is Buying Niche Tokens Worth Millions of Dollars

By Muyao Shen
PARIS, FRANCE - DECEMBER 7: President-Elect Donald Trump reacts during his meeting with Prince William, Prince of Wales at the Embassy of the United Kingdom's Residence on December 7, 2024 in Paris, France. Donald Trump was among the wave of foreign dignitaries descending on Paris this weekend to attend a reopening ceremony at Notre-Dame Cathedral, more than five years after it was damaged in a major fire. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images) (Oleg Nikishin/Photographer: Oleg Nikishin/Gett)

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s crypto project, World Liberty Financial, appears to be buying specialized digital tokens worth millions of dollars as speculation increases that the decentralized finance lending platform is moving closer to becoming operational. 

Digital wallet belonging to the project have bought 2,731 Ether, 4,043 AAVE and 78,387 LINK tokens since Dec. 11, according to data compiled by blockchain data firm Nansen. A representative of World Liberty Financial did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

World Liberty Financial was unveiled in September as a DeFi project, a type of crypto projects that mimic financial activities like lending and trading without any intermediaries. The Trump family, including President-elect Donald Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, have been actively promoting the project through social media and public appearances. The project’s initial token sale struggled to meet its goals until controversial crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun invested $30 million. World Liberty Financial’s founders, Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman, were not well-known in the crypto industry.

“To me, it is a way to gain additional trust or a way to boost the project by shedding lights on these assets as the project will likely do well if these assets do,” said Nicolai Søndergaard, research analyst at Nansen. The firm appears to have bought around $10.4 million in Ether, $1.4 million of AAVE and $2.2 million in LINK, Nansen said.

LINK has jumped around 28% to $28, while AAVE increased about 17% to $52 since Tuesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Ether, the second-largest token by market value after Bitcoin, is up about 8% to $3,932 during the same period. 

AaveDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization that governs the Aave project, on Thursday passed a proposal made by World Liberty Financial to allow the project to launch a version of Aave’s protocols. According to World Liberty Financial’s proposal, the project will initially support the lending and borrowing of Ether, wrapped Bitcoin; and USDC and USDT stablecoins. In return, AaveDAO will receive 20% of the fees generated by World Liberty Financial using Aave, as well as 7% of the total supply of World Liberty’s WLFI tokens. World Liberty Financial also announced in November that it will use Chainlink for blockchain-based data.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.