Author: jk, Odaily
With the prevalence of the American narrative and the Trump narrative since Trump's victory and Bitcoin's breakthrough of $100,000, the market's attention is now focused on World Liberty Financial (WLFI), which has a strong relationship with his family. Since its launch in September 2023, WLFI has quickly attracted widespread market attention with its unique narrative and large-scale capital operations. Particularly during December, WLFI made a massive purchase of nearly $45 million worth of crypto assets, and this series of on-chain operations has brought many speculations to the market. Investors and analysts are trying to answer a key question: What tokens might WLFI continue to buy in the future?
Background Information
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) was officially launched in September 2023, claiming to be a DeFi platform with the characteristics of relying on the relationship with the Trump family and slogans with strong Trump personal attributes such as "Be Defiant". On the WLFI website, Trump is listed as the "Chief Crypto Advocate", while his sons Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump are all listed as "Ambassadors".
The WLFI website. Source: WLFI official website
It is worth noting that on the website, the WLFI project has actually avoided any legal connection with the Trump family. The project claims to be the "only DeFi platform inspired by Trump", and the positions of advocates and ambassadors cannot be considered as any real positions of management participation. Moreover, at the bottom of the website, there is a small text:
"Donald J. Trump, any of his family members, 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 is not held by Trump, any of his family members, the Trump Organization, DT Marks DEFI LLC, or their respective directors, officers, employees, affiliates or principals."
The $WLFI token and the use and sale of the World Liberty Financial platform are provided solely by World Liberty Financial or its affiliates. DT Marks DEFI, LLC and its affiliates (including Donald J. Trump) have received or may receive approximately 22.5 billion tokens from World Liberty Financial and are entitled to 75% of the net protocol revenue under a service agreement. The definition of protocol revenue includes revenue from any source, net of agreed reserves, fees and other amounts, the specific amount of which is yet to be determined.
World Liberty Financial and its $WLFI token are not political in nature, nor are they part of any political campaign.
In summary, the project is openly telling everyone: "We have a deep connection with the Trump family, but legally we have no connection at all." It seems not very responsible.
No wonder hardly anyone is buying the WLFI token: currently, the project website shows that out of a total of 20 billion tokens, only a quarter of the sales target has been completed since its launch, and this is against the backdrop of such a bull market.
Only 5 billion of the token sales target has been completed. Source: WLFI website
However, this does not affect the assets purchased by this project becoming a certain degree of market sentiment; after all, "being willing to invest in the Trump family" and "what assets has the Trump family invested in? Can I follow suit" are two completely different things. In the latter, as the winner of the crypto advocate, Trump's appeal is unprecedented.
Large-scale Crypto Asset Purchases
Previously, according to Spot On Chain monitoring, WLFI has made large-scale purchases of various mainstream and emerging crypto assets through a major wallet address since November 2023.
The assets it has purchased include:
ETH: Total of $30 million, purchased 8,105 ETH at an average price of $3,701/ETH;
cbBTC: Total of $10 million, purchased 102.9 cbBTC at an average price of $97,181/cbBTC; (later swapped for WBTC)
LINK: Total of $2 million, purchased 78,387 LINK at an average price of $25.51/LINK;
AAVE: Total of $1.91 million, purchased 5,886 AAVE at an average price of $324.4/AAVE;
ENA: Total of $0.75 million, purchased 741,687 ENA at an average price of $1.011/ENA;
ONDO: Total of $0.25 million, purchased 134,216 ONDO at an average price of $1.86/ONDO
Subsequently, World Liberty Financial announced a partnership with Ethena Labs, and the two parties are seeking long-term cooperation, starting with Ethena's revenue token sUSDe.
It can be seen that even after the multiple pullbacks following the breakthrough of $100,000 and the large crash influenced by the Fed's hawkish rate hike, as of December 19, the six tokens purchased by WLFI still maintained a 30-day uptrend: Bitcoin and Ethereum gained 10% and 15% respectively, Chainlink 65.1%, Aave 103.9%, Ethena 89.4%, and Ondo 85.1%. In other words, WLFI's buy targets have indeed become the market's wind vane, able to maintain a 30-day gain even during the big pullback.
So, what tokens might WLFI buy next?
What are WLFI's Potential Next Buy Targets?
We have three dimensions to speculate:
Polychain's Investment Assets
On the website, we can see that Luke Pearson from Polychain has become one of WLFI's advisors, and there is a considerable possibility that the purchased tokens will come from Polychain's investment portfolio. According to Rootdata, we can see that not every project in Polychain's investment portfolio has issued tokens, and there are even fewer that can be considered veteran DeFi projects.
Top 100 DeFi Assets by CoinGecko Market Cap
At the same time, the assets previously purchased by WLFI were all within the top 100 CoinGecko market cap list, which may be due to considerations of volatility and pullback. Also, given the cooperation between WLFI and Ethena, its token purchases may also carry considerations for subsequent cooperation; using the heat and influence of purchases to reach cooperation with larger DeFi projects in the market, and then feed back to the brand value of WLFI itself as a DeFi protocol.
Assets Listed on COWSwap (Relatively Small Impact)
The decentralized trading platform used by WLFI is CowSwap, which is also one of the more popular DEXs currently, with products including AMM, etc. On the CowSwap interface, it can be found that the assets that have been officially verified by CowSwap and do not require manual input of the contract, if the network is Ethereum, there are a total of 374, which can be taken as the maximum range to choose from. However, CowSwap does not support many networks other than Ethereum, only Gnosis, Base, Arbitrum One, and Sepolia testnet. WLFI's other purchases are also very likely to have occurred on CowSwap, so the possibility of DeFi projects on Solana is relatively smaller. Of course, this factor has a relatively small impact, and WLFI can completely purchase the assets of other projects through other platforms supporting Solana, manual purchases, or OTC purchases.
So, what tokens can be found based on these considerations?
Polychain's investment projects/CowSwap's listed assets/Top 100 CoinGecko market cap:
Maker (MKR), recently rebranded as SKY
Uniswap (UNI)
DYDX (currently ranked 113 in market cap, not much difference)
At the same time, if we also consider projects with high brand value that are not in Polychain's investment portfolio, the following four cryptocurrencies can be added: Lido, Pendle, Eigen, and Curve. These projects also have some "American attributes", and it is possible to reach cooperation with them. If we expand the market cap a little further, then 1inch and Morpho may also have a small chance.
Overall, WLFI's investment strategy has a certain strategic nature, showing strong capital operation capabilities. In the future, WLFI's purchase targets may continue to focus on high-quality DeFi assets among the top 100 by market cap, and the recent big correction may also become the best window for buying. During the remainder of Trump's term, WLFI's buying actions may provide important signals for investment decisions.
