World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance (DeFi) project associated with the Trump family, loaded up on cryptocurrency in the hours before the US President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
According to Arkham Intelligence data, the protocol’s wallet address bought $46.8 million worth of Ether (ETH) and $46.7 million in wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) within four hours, often at a rate of over $4 million per purchase.
The buying spree included tokens with smaller market capitalizations, such as Ethena (ENA), wrapped Tron (wTRX), Chainlink (LINK), Aave (AAVE) and Uniswap (UNI). The wallet used the decentralized exchange CoW for the transactions.
The purchases bring the wallet’s cryptocurrency holdings up to $326.2 million at the time of writing, with most of the value coming from just three coins: ETH, USD Coin (USDC) and wBTC.
World Liberty Financial’s portfolio surged to $326.2 million on Jan. 20. Source: Arkham
The movement in the World Liberty Financial wallet comes as interest has spiked over the newly inaugurated president and his family’s crypto endeavors, including the somewhat controversial decentralized finance project.
As Cointelegraph reported on Jan. 20, World Liberty Financial has sold out 20% of its 100 billion tokens and released another 5% of the token supply with a 230% markup.
The day prior, on Jan. 19, news broke that the project had purchased ENS domains for many members of the Trump family. Speculation ran riot on X that the move may signal more Trump-tied memecoins.
Two days ahead of his inauguration, Trump launched the Official Trump (TRUMP) token on the Solana blockchain. According to CoinMarketCap, the memecoin surged to a market capitalization of over $15 billion on Jan. 19 before dropping 40% on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. First Lady Melania Trump also launched her self-titled memecoin, MELANIA, over the weekend.
The tokens’ debut has sharply divided the crypto community.
World Liberty Financial is spearheaded by Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, who previously worked on another DeFi platform, Dough Finance.
The First Family has shown strong support for the project, with President Trump designated the “chief crypto advocate” while Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. serve as Web3 ambassadors.
Additional reporting by Christopher Tepedino.
Related: What the release of Trump’s memecoin signals for crypto regulations
