What assets might the Trump family project WLFI buy next?
The assets of WLFI have the potential to become a barometer for established DeFi coins.Author: jk, Odaily Planet Daily
With the prevalence of the American narrative and the Trump narrative since Trump's victory and Bitcoin's surge past the $100,000 mark, the market's attention is focused on World Liberty Financial (WLFI), which has strong ties to his family. Since its launch in September 2023, WLFI has quickly garnered widespread attention in the market due to its unique narrative and large-scale capital operations. Particularly during December, WLFI made significant purchases of nearly $45 million in crypto assets, leading to much speculation in the market. Investors and analysts are trying to answer a key question: Which tokens might WLFI continue to buy in the future?
Background Information
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) officially launched in September 2023, claiming to be a DeFi platform that relies on its relationship with the Trump family and values slogans like "Be Defiant" that have strong personal attributes of Trump. On WLFI's official website, Trump is listed as the "Chief Crypto Advocate," while his sons Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump hold the title of "Ambassador."
WLFI's website. Source: WLFI official website
It is important to note that on the official website, the WLFI project legally avoids any connection with the Trump family. The project claims to be the "only DeFi platform inspired by Trump," and the titles of advocates and ambassadors cannot be considered real management positions. Moreover, there is a small print at the bottom of the website:
"Donald J. Trump, any family member, or any director, officer, or employee of the Trump Organization, DT Marks DEFI LLC, or their respective affiliates, are not officers, directors, founders, or employees of World Liberty Financial (WLFI) or its affiliates. The ownership, management, or operation of World Liberty Financial, Inc., its affiliates, or the World Liberty Financial platform does not belong to Trump, any family member, the Trump Organization, DT Marks DEFI LLC, or their respective directors, officers, employees, affiliates, or principal persons.
The use and sale of the $WLFI token and the World Liberty Financial platform are solely provided by World Liberty Financial or its affiliates. DT Marks DEFI, LLC and its affiliates (including Donald J. Trump) have received or may receive approximately 2.25 billion tokens from World Liberty Financial, and are entitled to receive 75% of the net agreement revenue under a service agreement. The definition of this agreement revenue includes income from any source, minus agreed reserves, fees, and other amounts, the specific amounts of which cannot yet be determined.
World Liberty Financial and its $WLFI token are not political in nature, nor are they part of any political campaign."
Overall, the project is clearly telling everyone: "We have countless connections with the Trump family, but in reality, there is no legal connection." It sounds somewhat irresponsible.
It is no wonder that almost no one is buying WLFI's tokens: currently, the project’s official website shows that of the total supply of 20 billion tokens, only a quarter of the sales target has been completed since its launch, and this is in the context of such a bullish market.
Token sales target only completed 5 billion. Source: WLFI official website
However, this does not prevent the assets purchased by this project from becoming a market trend to some extent; after all, "willingness to invest in the Trump family" and "what assets has the Trump family invested in? Can I follow suit?" are two completely different matters. In the latter case, as the crypto advocate Trump’s appeal is unprecedented.
Large-scale Crypto Asset Purchases
Previously, according to Spot On Chain monitoring, WLFI has made significant purchases of various mainstream and emerging crypto assets since November 2023 through a major wallet address.
The assets purchased include:
ETH: Total of $30 million, purchasing 8,105 ETH at an average price of $3,701 per coin;
cbBTC: Total of $10 million, purchasing 102.9 cbBTC at an average price of $97,181 per coin; (later switched to WBTC)
LINK: Total of $2 million, purchasing 78,387 LINK at an average price of $25.51 per coin;
AAVE: Total of $1.91 million, purchasing 5,886 AAVE at an average price of $324.4 per coin;
ENA: Total of $750,000, purchasing 741,687 ENA at an average price of $1.011 per coin;
ONDO: Total of $250,000, purchasing 134,216 ONDO at an average price of $1.86 per coin.
Subsequently, World Liberty Financial announced a partnership with Ethena Labs, with both parties seeking long-term cooperation, starting with Ethena's revenue token sUSDe.
It can be seen that even after several pullbacks following the breakthrough of $100,000 and the significant drop influenced by the Federal Reserve's hawkish interest rate news, as of December 19, the six tokens purchased by WLFI still maintained gains within their 30-day trend: Bitcoin and Ethereum increased by 10% and 15%, respectively, Chainlink by 65.1%, Aave by 103.9%, Ethena by 89.4%, and Ondo by 85.1%. This means that WLFI's purchase targets have indeed become a market trend during the rise, allowing them to maintain a 30-day gain despite significant pullbacks.
So, what tokens might WLFI buy next?
Potential Next Assets for WLFI?
We can speculate from three dimensions:
Investment Assets from Polychain
On the official website, Luke Pearson from Polychain has become one of WLFI's advisors, making it quite possible that the purchased tokens will come from Polychain's investment portfolio. According to Rootdata, we can see that not every project in the Polychain portfolio has issued tokens, and even fewer can be considered seasoned DeFi projects.
DeFi Assets in the Top 100 by Market Cap on Coingecko
At the same time, the assets previously purchased by WLFI are all within the top 100 list by market cap on Coingecko, possibly due to considerations of volatility and pullbacks. Additionally, regarding WLFI's cooperation with Ethena, its token purchases are likely to carry subsequent cooperation considerations; using the heat and influence of purchases to collaborate with larger DeFi projects in the market, thereby enhancing WLFI's brand value as a DeFi protocol.
Listed Assets on COWSwap (Minimal Impact)
The decentralized trading platform used by WLFI is CowSwap, which is currently one of the more popular DEXs, with products including AMM, etc. On the CowSwap interface, it can be found that there are a total of 374 assets verified by CowSwap that do not require manual contract input if the network is selected as Ethereum, which can be considered the largest range to choose from. CowSwap does not support many networks; besides Ethereum, it only supports Gnosis, Base, Arbitrum One, and the Sepolia testnet. Other purchases by WLFI are also likely to occur on CowSwap, so the possibility for DeFi projects on Solana is relatively low. Of course, this factor has a relatively small impact, as WLFI can completely purchase, manually buy, or OTC buy assets from other projects through other platforms that support Solana.
So, what tokens can we identify based on these considerations?
Simultaneously from Polychain's investment projects/CowSwap's listed assets/and Coingecko's top 100 by market cap:
Maker (MKR), recently rebranded as SKY
Uniswap (UNI)
DYDX (currently ranked 113 in market cap, not far off)
Additionally, if we consider high-brand-value projects that are not in Polychain's investment portfolio, we can include the following four tokens: Lido, Pendle, Eigen, and Curve. These projects also have some "American attributes," making cooperation possible. If we expand the market cap a bit further, then 1inch and Morpho also have a small possibility.
Overall, WLFI's investment strategy shows a certain level of strategic thinking and demonstrates strong capital operation capabilities. In the future, WLFI's purchase targets may continue to revolve around high-quality DeFi assets in the top 100 by market cap, and this recent significant pullback may also become the best window for purchases. In the upcoming term of Trump, WLFI's buying actions may provide important signals for investment decisions.
