Original|Odaily Planet Daily(@OdailyChina)
Author|Wenser(@wenser 2010)
For Trump, 2025 was a year of starting his "second professional spring"; for the Trump family's crypto project WLFI, 2025 was a "midsummer."
This crypto project, which began in September 2024, achieved multiple milestone results within a short year, including two rounds of public offerings, three large financings, token launches, the introduction of the stablecoin USD1, and the establishment of the DAT Treasury listed company. Behind these achievements, however, lie even more controversies: initial doubts that Sun Yuchen's hefty investment of $30 million was "political donations," the subsequent launch of the TRUMP token, the trading ban封闭期 after WLFI's launch, and USD1 being designated as the "specified" currency for Binance's $2 billion investment. What has shadowed WLFI and its team is not just the layer of "political entanglement" from Trump himself, but also countless intertwinings of insider information and criticism. On January 30th, the "WLFI $550 million public offering" will mark its one-year anniversary. Let's review the various rights and wrongs of this past year and clarify the facts and opinions.
3 Major Controversies of the Trump Family's Crypto Project: WLFI Public Offering, TRUMP Meme Coin, and USD1 Stablecoin Popularization
In 2025, the Trump family achieved a wealth increase of $1.4 billion through crypto assets, accounting for about one-fifth of their total net worth. During Trump's second term, the Trump family gained significant returns through new projects such as the jointly founded crypto platform World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the TRUMP Meme coin, and the bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin Corp. (ABTC). Behind the huge wealth, however, are 3 major controversies:
Controversy 1: WLFI Public Offering Possibly Political Donations
In October 2024, after completing the whitelist registration process, WLFI officially launched its public offering at a price of $0.015 per token. However, due to repeated website crashes, although it raised $5 million within an hour, it still fell far short of the $300 million fundraising target. Subsequently, WLFI officially reduced the fundraising target by 90% to 10% of the original, i.e., $30 million.
In November 2024, Sun Yuchen announced a $30 million investment in WLFI through the entity TRON DAO, becoming the project's largest investor. Thus, despite the official documents specifically mentioning that "the Trump family will receive 75% of WLFI's net income without assuming any responsibility," this round of financing concluded as scheduled.
Subsequently, Sun Yuchen transformed from a "cryptocurrency practitioner" who once had quite a few disagreements with official US forces into a "WLFI project advisor." This led to market suspicions that the WLFI public offering fundraising might be political donations, a suspicion that grew even louder after WLFI's second public offering and the TRUMP token launch.
Controversy 2: TRUMP Becomes a Harvesting Scythe
In January 2025, on the eve of Trump's inauguration as US President, TRUMP, marketed as the "official genuine Trump Meme coin," was officially launched, causing a market stir and attracting countless people rushing in, attempting to realize their dreams of getting rich quickly (which indeed succeeded for many Chinese community leaders).
But in the end, aside from the TRUMP token issuer making a whopping $320 million in fees within 4 months, approximately 800,000 wallets accumulated losses of $2 billion, with an average loss of about $2,500 per wallet, also making it the largest "epic harvesting operation" in cryptocurrency history.
During this process, WLFI's second large-scale public offering also successfully concluded, ultimately attracting $550 million in participation: On January 20th, WLFI completed the sale of 20 billion tokens, raising $300 million; that same day, due to overwhelming demand for the token sale, WLFI officially directly opened an additional 5% token sale, with the price per token rising from $0.015 to $0.05; ultimately successfully raising an additional $250 million.
Thus, stimulated by the positive news of Trump's inauguration as US President and WLFI's successful fundraising, TRUMP once again became the "money-making machine" and "harvesting scythe" for the Trump family's crypto project.
It is worth mentioning that after the first public offering was completed, WLFI began using the funds to purchase ETH and other cryptocurrencies. Relying on the "political halo" of Trump and the Trump family, WLFI's buying power gradually gained a strong ability to influence market liquidity and short-term hot money, and in the subsequent time became a major factor in "News Trading".
Controversy 3: USD1 Becomes the "National Team Stablecoin"
In March 2025, WLFI officially announced plans to launch the stablecoin USD1. This stablecoin is 100% backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, U.S. dollar deposits, and other cash equivalents. Initially, it will be issued on Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC), aiming to provide sovereign investors and institutions with a safe and efficient cross-border transaction tool.
It is no exaggeration to say that USD1 was born with a strong "Trump color," Subsequent events corroborated this fact.
In early April 2025, major events related to WLFI and USD1 occurred:
First, the Trump family, through the new holding company WLF Holdco LLC, took control of at least 60% of the equity in the DeFi project World Liberty Financial, replacing the two co-founders as the controlling party;
Second, after 10 hours of heated debate, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee passed the Stablecoin Act (Stable Act). It was reported that this bill would establish a strict regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, requiring issuers to obtain federal or state approval and be 1:1 backed by highly liquid assets. At that time, Democratic lawmakers strongly criticized this, with representative Maxine Waters calling it "a clear manifestation of greed and corruption" and questioning the president's involvement in the industry while pushing for relaxed crypto regulation as a conflict of interest. In July 2025, the U.S. stablecoin genius act (GENIUS Act), derived from the stablecoin bill, was successfully passed by votes in the Senate and House of Representatives and signed into law by Trump.
Furthermore, in the UAE sovereign fund MGX's $2 billion investment in the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, USD1 was selected as the "official stablecoin." This news was also confirmed by a post from WLFI co-founder and Trump's second son, Eric Trump.
Earlier this year, WLFI officially announced that its entity World Liberty Trust had submitted a de novo application to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on January 7th, seeking to obtain a national trust bank charter in the United States. If approved, this trust bank would directly issue and custody its dollar stablecoin USD1, and gradually carry out crypto asset custody and stablecoin exchange services, mainly serving institutional clients. Although Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren had requested a pause in the review of the application, U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould emphasized that WLFI's application would undergo strict evaluation like any other.
On January 23rd, WLFI co-founder and Trump's second son, Eric Trump, posted that the stablecoin USD1, which had been issued for less than a year, had surpassed the issuance volume ( $3.74 billion) of PayPal's stablecoin PYUSD (issuance volume only $3.69 billion).
In summary, the "series of crypto-friendly policies" primarily pushed by Trump have also, on the side, provided policy support and regulatory convenience for the promotion and mainstreaming, institutional adoption of the USD1 stablecoin.
Beyond the above controversies, what is even more suggestive is the series of "fancy slick operations" by the Trump family's crypto project and insiders in the crypto market.
The Trump Family's Insider Trading Code: "News Trading" and "TACO-style Trading" Throughout
As mentioned earlier, the operation of the Trump family's crypto project WLFI using public offering funds to buy various cryptocurrencies provided a natural breeding ground for "News Trading"; and Trump's equivocal political attitude and frequent initiation of tariff trade wars provided convenience for "TACO-style trading" and insider trading. Specifically, related insider criticisms include the following events:
3 Trump Dinners Spark External Criticism and Questions
In April 2025, news of a Trump VIP dinner for the top 220 TRUMP holders was officially announced. Subsequently, in a short time, the on-chain transfer transaction volume of TRUMP tokens reached $2.4 billion, the price of TRUMP rose 60% that day, on-chain activity surged 200%, and recorded "the highest single-day trading volume on centralized exchanges since mid-February." Ultimately, this "token holding competition" ended with an average TRUMP asset holding of nearly $4.8 million per person, with some TRUMP dinner invitees obtaining huge profits through token trading.
In May 2025, the "Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner" organized by the MAGA Inc. super PAC (Trump campaign organization) was also successfully held, with a single seat costing $1.5 million and up. These 2 Trump dinners also raised questions from several politicians, including Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who believed this might involve an exchange of "presidential privileges for business investment."
In October 2025, Trump also hosted a tech giant dinner under the pretext of raising funds for the "new White House banquet hall." Attendees included Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, executives from Coinbase and Ripple; representatives from Meta, Google, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, and Microsoft also attended this dinner. This event was also interpreted by the outside world as one example of Trump "using power for personal gain."
In addition, the WLFI foundation, due to its huge influence, has repeatedly purchased various altcoins, which is also regarded as one of the market风向标s, becoming a high-incidence area for news trading and insider trading.
Hyperliquid 50x Leverage Insider Whale Accurately Bets on Tariff Negative News and Market Rebound
In February 2025, the "Hyperliquid 50x Leverage Whale" once became the focus of the market. In less than a month, this address accurately timed Trump's positive news, "winning all three battles":
First, the address made a profit of over $6.8 million by going long on BTC and ETH;
Second, the address opened a $13.45 million short position on BTC, initially losing $60,000, but ultimately succeeded in turning a loss into a profit, making nearly $300,000.
Third, the address went long on ETH with 50x leverage,最终 profiting $2.15 million in less than 40 minutes. The cumulative profit from the three trades was $9.28 million. For details, see 《Revisiting Hyperliquid Contract "Insider Brother's" Slick Operations, Accurately Opening and Closing Long and Short Positions》.
Insider Whale Reappears: Rakes in $200 Million in the 10·11 Great Crash, Bets on "Trump Pardoning CZ" Ahead of the Market
In October 2025, the "10·11 Epic Great Crash" brought a historically large-scale liquidation to the market, but such chaos instead became a stage for insider whales to perform.
Among them, address 0xb317D2BC2D3d2Df5Fa441B5bAE0AB9d8b07283ae, before the big crash arrived, once opened a large short position with a nominal value of about $1.1 billion, making nearly $200 million in profit in one day; address 0xc2a30212a8DdAc9e123944d6e29FADdCe994E5f2, since October 14th, once achieved a terrifying record of 12 consecutive wins, with a cumulative profit of $12.634 million.
The Hyperliquid insider whale Garrett Jin's associated account "bigwinner01" even bet on "Trump pardoning CZ" as early as September 28, 2025, investing a total of $28,677.33 and profiting $56,824.32, with a profit rate close to 100%. Behind Garrett Jin, according to previous investigations by on-chain detective Eyes, his消息源 may come from insiders who长期利用白宫内部传闻及政策预告进行交易. The related information is allegedly passed from aides close to the US presidential team to a group of traders with privileged information, used to establish favorable positions in advance. Currently, the confirmed core figures involved are Zach Witkoff and Chase Herro, and Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is also indicated as possibly involved. For details, see 《How is the 100% Win Rate Whale Forged? Revealing the True Identity of the "Trump Faction Insider"》.
Conclusion: WLFI is Both a Model Play and a Wealth Creation Machine
Aside from the above controversies, last September, on the eve of the official listing of the WLFI token, it once had a dispute with the veteran DeFi protocol Aave over early token allocation. From that time on, WLFI's ambition to be more than just a DeFi lending platform was already revealed. After WLFI's treasury US-listed company ALT5 Sigma, the bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin Corp. (ABTC), and other companies joined the "crypto battlefield," the role played by WLFI became even more complex—now, it is both a model project for Trump's pro-crypto attitude and a "crypto regulatory风向标" in the eyes of the crypto market.
After all, people think—"If the president's family's crypto project is still doing well, the crypto regulatory environment under the current US government won't suddenly turn bad." From this perspective, although there are constant controversies and many questions, WLFI and the Trump family's numerous crypto projects have also objectively accelerated the process of crypto mainstreaming. But for members of the Trump family, WLFI's more important function is still as a "wealth creation machine" that allows them to make a fortune.
