‘We Are Not Selling’: Trump-Linked DeFi Project Addresses $250M in Ethereum Token Moves

The Donald Trump-linked DeFi protocol World Liberty Financial transferred more than $250 million in Ethereum, Wrapped Bitcoin and other Ethereum-based assets from its multi-sig wallet on Monday—though the venture claims that it's not selling the assets amid volatile market movements.

“We’re making routine movements of our crypto holdings as part of regular treasury management, and payment of fees and expenses and to address working capital requirements,” the protocol posted on X (formerly known as Twitter). “To be clear, we are not selling tokens—we are simply reallocating assets for ordinary business purposes.” 

The protocol’s treasury, which held more than $400 million in assets on February 2 based on Arkham Intelligence’s portfolio archive tool, now holds less than $90 million in total assets.

The largest outflows came from Ethereum and Wrapped Bitcoin—or WBTC, a 1:1 backed Bitcoin alternative that trades on Ethereum—of which nearly $168 million and $64 million were transferred respectively on Monday afternoon.

While most assets were transferred to unlabeled addresses, the bulk of the Ethereum outflows was transferred to a wallet labeled by Arkham as Coinbase Prime—the American cryptocurrency exchange’s full-service brokerage for institutional grade investors, which led to speculation that the platform may be selling.

This marks the second time that the platform has shared a message to its followers reassuring them that it is not selling tokens, most recently having done so on January 14. 

A week after that announcement, the project excited the crypto community when it purchased more than $100 million worth of crypto assets, highlighted by $47 million in Ethereum and Wrapped Bitcoin respectively, as a way of commemorating Trump’s inauguration as the 47th President of the United States.

In addition to transfers of Ethereum and Wrapped Bitcoin, World Liberty Financial also moved smaller chunks of Aave (AAVE), Ethena (ENA), Movement (MOVE), Chainlink (LINK), and Ondo (ONDO). 

The platform, which is still conducting an extended token sale, still has more than 1 billion WLFI tokens available for $0.05 each. World Liberty Financial is said to be inspired by President Trump, who serves as the project’s Chief Crypto Advocate alongside his sons, Donald Jr., Eric, and Barron, who are listed as "Web3 Ambassadors" to the project.

Edited by Andrew Hayward