Justin Sun, founder of TRON (TRX), noted World Liberty Financial (WLFI) was turning into a TRX whale. The asset is now the third-biggest holding in the portfolio of the Trump family DeFi project.
World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the Trump family DeFi project, is buying up TRON (TRX), days after Justin Sun acquired more WLFI. After the last few purchases, World Liberty Fi has TRX as its third-biggest holding. Sun even started giving credit to President Donald Trump for some of crypto’s latest bullish moves.
In my view, if I have made any money in cryptocurrency, all credit goes to President Trump @realDonaldTrump. Both Trump Coin and World Liberty Financial are bound to perform exceptionally well.
— H.E. Justin Sun 🍌 (@justinsuntron) January 22, 2025
TRX was one of the purchases for WLFI in the past few days, where the fund spent $168.4M on six tokens. A total of $7.35M were allocated to TRX holdings, spread into several purchases. The latest swap was for $2.65M USDT to purchase 10.18M TRX.
The final balance of World Liberty Fi wallets is for 30.107M TRX, valued at $7.58M after the latest appreciation. The holdings of TRX surpassed the $7.38M in USDT, but lag behind major assets like ETH, WBTC and USDC. The top three assets can all be used as preferred collaterals in the intended Aave vault by World Liberty Fi.
The recent TRX purchase is unusual, since WLFI mostly focused on the Ethereum ecosystem. In the past weeks, the fund bought up AAVE, ENA, LINK, ETH, and WBTC, while also holding stablecoin reserves. TRX buying happened even before the fund acquired Solana (SOL), despite the launch of Official Trump (TRUMP) on that chain.
The portfolio of World Liberty Fi expanded to over $354.4M, despite some criticism that it was focusing on older projects with a smaller upside. The main reason for the purchases is the need to use Aave vaults for lending, which mostly require assets from the Ethereum ecosystem.
Following the latest focus on TRX, the asset recovered overnight, to trade at $0.25. TRX open interest moved down from its peak on January 18 above $220M, sliding to $171M after a short-term market correction.
TRON has always positioned itself as a chain widely used by the Chinese market. Its native USDT tokens were the best-suited asset for P2P markets and local investments. Even the gaming, Web3 and meme ecosystem were tied to the Chinese market.
The latest connection to WLFI was used by Sun to tap the emerging trend of ‘Made in USA’ crypto. TRX does not immediately fit the bill, but the platform may try to move closer to the US market.
Fully agreed! We have an outstanding plan that will bring over $200 billion worth of business to the United States. This will be massive and meaningful! https://t.co/Qt1P9y7qAQ
— H.E. Justin Sun 🍌 (@justinsuntron) January 22, 2025
The recent shift by TRON to draw in US-based crypto investors follows the decision of TON chain to expand to the US market. TRX is widely traded, but also lagged behind other L1 due to its isolated ecosystem.
TRON has been trying to build up its legitimacy as a chain comparable to Solana or Base. The chain will become an important carrier of WBTC, despite concerns about the asset’s transparent backing in its new TRON-based version. TRON carries more than $7.42B in value locked, while its main asset is deflationary, with a gradual appreciation trend.
The World Liberty Fi DeFi fund moved closer to its milestone of selling 25B WLFI tokens. The recent popularity of TRUMP meme tokens boosted the buying and distributing of 22.38B tokens.
WLFI was also corrected downward from $0.15 to $0.05, increasing the sales. The WLFI sale did not manage to raise the initial goal of $300M, set ambitiously by the Trump family. The asset underperformed compared to the TRUMP meme token, which reached a valuation of over $9B in the first days of trading.
There is no deadline for the start of WLFI transfers, or the asset’s exact role. The meme space reacted by creating a new token with the same ticker.
WLFI started expanding from January 20 onward, coinciding with the launch of TRUMP. The token peaked at $0.018, with liquidity close to $900K.
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