Trump Family’s DeFi Project Stocked Up on Crypto Assets Ahead of White House Crypto Summit

Say what you will about the Department of Government Efficiency, but there are some ways that the Trump administration has significantly cut down on bloat. For example, it used to take at least a little digging to identify if a President was favor-trading and self-dealing. Now it seems like it just happens out in the open. So streamlined!

To that end, cryptocurrency analysis platform Nansen AI reported that World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance protocol that is operated primarily by President Trump’s three sons, purchased $25 million in cryptocurrencies including $10 million in Ethereum, $10 million in Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and $1.5 million in of MOVE. That move comes just one day before President Trump will host the White House Crypto Summit on Friday. The company also announced Thursday that it was entering a “strategic reserve deal” with layer-1 blockchain project SUI, which caused a significant uptick in the value of the coin.

Now, to be fair, it doesn’t exactly take a genius to place a bet that the cryptocurrency market might spike in response to the hype generated by the White House Crypto Summit—just like when Trump announced a “Crypto Strategic Reserve,” it resulted in prices spiking. The crypto market, if nothing else, is extremely predictable in that it will react to hype.

But also, Trump’s kids run the company, and World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff (the son of billionaire Trump buddy Steve Witkoff) is one of the “industry leaders” invited to the summit. And that’s a whole lot of posturing to be doing right before an event that will almost certainly generate a bunch of hype, if not actual policy announcements that could cause the crypto market to surge again.

And it’d be silly to ignore the fact that World Liberty Financial has at least seemingly served as a platform for currying favor with the President via lining his kids’ pockets.

Justin Sun, a Chinese national and founder of the cryptocurrency TRON, was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 for allegedly committing fraud and manipulating the price of his cryptocurrency. The SEC asked for a stay in the case shortly after Sun purchased $75 million worth of tokens from World Liberty Financial and joined the company as an advisor. Convenient!  Earlier this year, Reuters reported that several people who bought significant holdings of World Liberty tokens said a primary appeal was having a connection with Trump. Interesting! Also, World Liberty Financial is set up in such a way that the Trump family can lay claim to 75% of the net revenue. Very normal!

People have rightfully skewered Nancy Pelosi for her incredibly successful stock trading history, to the point where you can now ride the coattails of her trades that tend to overperform the market. It might be time to start doing the same thing by watching the crypto activity of World Liberty Financial. They sure seem to know something.