By Tom Wilson
LONDON (Reuters) -A United Arab Emirates-based fund has bought $100 million worth of digital tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture of U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, becoming its largest publicly known investor.
Aqua 1 Foundation said in a statement on Thursday its purchase of the tokens, known as $WLFI, sought to speed up the creation of a “blockchain-powered financial ecosystem” with stablecoins and tokenised traditional assets at its heart.
A spokesperson for World Liberty confirmed the investment to Reuters.
A so-called governance token, $WLFI cannot be traded but gives holders the right to vote on changes to the business’ underlying code. World Liberty said this week it was “working behind the scenes” to make the token transferable.
“WLFI and Aqua 1 will jointly identify and nurture high-potential blockchain projects together,” Aqua 1 founding partner Dave Lee said in the statement. The fund’s investment and compliance teams would help World Liberty expand in South America, Europe and Asia, it added.
Despite its investment, Aqua 1 maintains a minimal online presence. Its X account has only three posts and approximately 1,120 followers while its website was created on May 28, according to data from two web domain trackers.
World Liberty also plans to support the launch of a separate Aqua 1 fund aimed at boosting the “digital economy transformation” in the Middle East through blockchain and artificial intelligence, the statement said.
Aqua 1 did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the World Liberty spokesperson had no further immediate comment.
Launched two months before the 2024 U.S. presidential election by Trump and his business partners, World Liberty has yielded hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the Republican president’s family business.
World Liberty has drawn criticism from Democratic lawmakers and government ethics watchdogs over potential conflicts of interest. The Trump Organization has said the president’s investments, assets and business interests are held in a trust managed by his children.
World Liberty aims to open access to financial services via digital tokens, without intermediaries such as banks.
It has launched a stablecoin called USD1 that was bolstered in May when an Abu Dhabi investment firm chose it for a $2 billion investment in giant crypto exchange Binance.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson in London; Editing by Frances Kerry and Louise Heavens)
