Author: Sissie
The cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) supported by the Trump family announced on January 20 that it has increased its holdings of cryptocurrency assets by more than $88 million, including $32.81 million in WBTC, $37.47 million in ETH, $4.7 million in TRX (TRON), and various other cryptocurrencies.Among them, TRON became the first Chinese blockchain project to be included in its investment portfolio. Subsequently, WLFI further increased its holdings of TRX.
As soon as the news was released, TRX rose for 3 consecutive days, with a cumulative increase of 10.94%. In addition to the traffic and capital effects brought by the "Trump effect", Justin Sun may be laying out a bigger vision.
Becoming a WLFI advisor, leveraging the "Trump effect" traffic lever
World Liberty Financial has publicly announced that it is a project driven by members of the Donald Trump family (son Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.), and has received repeated support from Trump himself on his official Twitter account. Before and after the WLFI token sale, the official X account of Trump posted content to promote the token sale, making World Liberty Financial seen by the crypto community as a DeFi project personally endorsed and supported by Trump.
On November 26, 2024, Justin Sun purchased 30 million WLFI tokens issued by World Liberty Financial through a wallet related to Huobi, and then TRON DAO invested an additional $45 million in World Liberty Financial, bringing its total investment to about $75 million. TRON DAO has become the largest investor in World Liberty Financial.
At the same time, Justin Sun became an advisor to the Trump family's cryptocurrency project WLFI. WLFI announced in the announcement: "Justin Sun's insights and experience will help us continue to innovate and develop." And Justin Sun said, "We have reached a cooperation with Trump, and WLFI will also be issued on the TRON mainnet, and it will be announced that TRX will be used as a reserve asset, and Huobi HTX will be the first to list it."
Going back to the evening of October 15, 2024, the World Liberty Financial token WLFI officially started the public sale. The total issuance of WLFI tokens was as high as 100 billion, and the plan was to publicly sell 20 billion tokens (equivalent to $3 billion) at a price of $0.015. However, the sales results of the WLFI tokens after their launch were far from expected, with less than $15 million in participating funds. As of November 5, only 9.82 billion WLFI tokens were sold, raising $14.73 million. Justin Sun and TRON DAO's investment not only provided WLFI with the much-needed liquidity, but also reignited market interest in the project. After the announcement, the price of WLFI tokens surged by more than 50% in a short period of time, and the trading volume also hit a new high, reaching an estimated $94 million by January 18, which means that the Trump family can get $48 million according to the World Liberty Financial whitepaper.
Moreover, Justin Sun has a full grasp of the "Trump effect". On January 18, Trump posted on his social media account, announcing the launch of his official personal Meme coin TRUMP (OFFICIAL TRUMP). On January 20, Trump's wife Melania also announced the issuance of her personal Meme coin $MELANIA. Huobi HTX was one of the first centralized exchanges to seize the hot spot. Subsequently, the platform followed up with a heavyweight event, where new users who registered had the opportunity to receive TRUMP and WLFI token airdrops, while continuously stimulating market participation enthusiasm. The Huobi HTX platform saw a single-day new user registration of over 100,000, also gaining a lot of traffic dividends.
This wave of crypto presidential inauguration operations has undoubtedly captured the attention and capital of the market, and the biggest winners behind the leveraging are not only the Trump family, but also Justin Sun and TRON.
Business cooperation, opening up new DeFi increments
TRON's decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem is particularly prominent, and it has also long been the largest circulation network for the most popular stablecoin USDT, surpassing Bitcoin to become the most widely used payment blockchain, ultimately accounting for 31.5% of all transactions. TRON reached the explosion point of DeFi activities last year, and SunSwap, as the most active decentralized exchange on the network, had its monthly trading volume soar to 4 million transactions by August, 97% of which involved WTRX. From August to December, the total swap trading volume reached 8.3 million transactions.
And World Liberty Financial has undoubtedly injected a strong impetus into the DeFi track. The WLFI project is not a hasty move, but has been fully prepared for legal compliance and operates within the regulatory framework, especially in terms of compliance. Based on the new DeFi tax regulations proposed by the US Internal Revenue Service in December 2024, it can be speculated that more systematic DeFi regulatory rules may be introduced in 2025, and the compliance of the DeFi industry may become a trend in the crypto development in 2025.
The ecological cooperation between the two is beneficial to the construction of the TRON payment system,as Justin Sun described TRON's vision in an interview with Mario Nawfal as a "decentralized SWIFT", he said: "The goal of the TRON mainnet is to become the core settlement layer for global financial transactions, providing efficient and low-cost financial services to various institutions and individuals."
The business cooperation between the two has already shown signs. Last November, World Liberty Financial announced that it will be using Chainlink's on-chain data and cross-chain interoperability standards. At the same time, World Liberty Financial will use Chainlink oracles built on Aave v3 instances on the Ethereum mainnet.
And Chainlink's Data Feeds is the official oracle solution for TRON, and this cooperation provides a more stable and transparent data source for TRON's decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. At the same time, TRON also participated in the Chainlink Scale program, further ensuring the reliability and compliance of data in the ecosystem.
Stepping onto the political stage, an important step towards globalization and compliance
TRON, through its non-profit organization "Digital Sovereignty Alliance" (DSA), became a sponsor of the Crypto Ball event celebrating the inauguration of Trump and Pence, and TRON representatives also attended the presidential inauguration ceremony held on January 20.TRON's close contact with the core of the US government is an important step for TRON to achieve globalization and compliance.
In 2023, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Justin Sun on charges of fraud related to crypto trading and concealing payments to celebrities to promote his company. The case is still pending. But Sun's investment has undoubtedly had a positive impact on the outcome of this case.
Currently, in the first week of Trump's term, nine of his campaign promises to the crypto industry have been fulfilled, with the signing of multiple executive orders to ease regulations on the crypto industry. These actions indicate that Trump is fulfilling his campaign promises, and he may introduce more crypto-friendly policies in the future.
In a more relaxed crypto regulatory environment, Justin Sun's strategic layout and innovation potential will be further unleashed. While expanding his crypto empire, as an advisor, he will also provide the Trump family with in-depth insights into the crypto market, helping to accelerate the industry's development and drive positive changes in the entire crypto ecosystem.
