UAE fund buys $100 million of Trump's World Liberty tokens
FILE PHOTO: Hong Kong-based crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff and Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization Eric Trump attend the TOKEN2049 conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, May 1, 2025. REUTERS/Federico Maccioni/File Photo
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)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
5 hours ago
- The Star
In win for Trump, US Supreme Court limits judges' power to block birthright citizenship order
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow on Friday to the power of federal judges by restricting their ability to grant broad legal relief in cases as the justices acted in a legal fight over President Donald Trump's bid to limit birthright citizenship, ordering lower courts that blocked the policy to reconsider the scope of their orders. However, the court's 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not let Trump's policy go into effect immediately and did not address the policy's legality. The justices granted a request by the Trump administration to narrow the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state that halted enforcement of his directive while litigation challenging the policy plays out. The ruling was written by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. With the court's conservatives in the majority and its liberals dissenting, the ruling specified that Trump's executive order cannot take effect until 30 days after Friday's ruling. "No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation - in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so," Barrett wrote. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by the court's other two liberal members, wrote, "The majority ignores entirely whether the President's executive order is constitutional, instead focusing only on the question whether federal courts have the equitable authority to issue universal injunctions. Yet the order's patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority's error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case." Trump welcomed the ruling in a social media post. "GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court," Trump wrote on Truth Social. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually under Trump's directive, according to the plaintiffs who challenged it, including the Democratic attorneys general of 22 states as well as immigrant rights advocates and pregnant immigrants. The case before the Supreme Court was unusual in that the administration used it to argue that federal judges lack the authority to issue nationwide, or "universal," injunctions, and asked the justices to rule that way and enforce the president's directive even without weighing its legal merits. In her dissent, Sotomayor said Trump's executive order is obviously unconstitutional. So rather than defend it on the merits, she wrote, the Justice Department "asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone." "The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it," Sotomayor wrote. "Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along." Federal judges have taken steps including issuing nationwide orders impeding Trump's aggressive use of executive action to advance his agenda. 'ILLEGAL AND CRUEL' The American Civil Liberties Union called the ruling troubling, but limited, because lawyers can seek additional protections for potentially affected families. "The executive order is blatantly illegal and cruel. It should never be applied to anyone," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "The court's decision to potentially open the door to enforcement is disappointing, but we will do everything in our power to ensure no child is ever subjected to the executive order." The plaintiffs argued that Trump's directive ran afoul of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861-1865 that ended slavery in the United States. The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause states that all "persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." The administration contends that the 14th Amendment, long understood to confer citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States, does not extend to immigrants who are in the country illegally or even to immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas. Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, whose state helped secure the nationwide injunction issued by a judge in Seattle, called Friday's ruling "disappointing on many levels" but stressed that the justices "confirmed that courts may issue broad injunctions when needed to provide complete relief to the parties." In a June 11-12 Reuters/Ipsos poll, 24% of all respondents supported ending birthright citizenship and 52% opposed it. Among Democrats, 5% supported ending it, with 84% opposed. Among Republicans, 43% supported ending it, with 24% opposed. The rest said they were unsure or did not respond to the question. The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has handed Trump some important victories on his immigration policies since he returned to office in January. On Monday, it cleared the way for his administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. In separate decisions on May 30 and May 19, it let the administration end the temporary legal status previously given by the government to hundreds of thousands of migrants on humanitarian grounds. But the court on May 16 kept in place its block on Trump's deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without adequate due process. The court heard arguments in the birthright citizenship dispute on May 15. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, representing the administration, told the justices that Trump's order "reflects the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship to the children of former slaves, not to illegal aliens or temporary visitors." An 1898 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark long has been interpreted as guaranteeing that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to American citizenship. Trump's administration has argued that the court's ruling in that case was narrower, applying to children whose parents had a "permanent domicile and residence in the United States." Universal injunctions have been opposed by presidents of both parties - Republican and Democratic - and can prevent the government from enforcing a policy against anyone, instead of just the individual plaintiffs who sued to challenge the policy. Proponents have said they are an efficient check on presidential overreach, and have stymied actions deemed unlawful by presidents of both parties. (Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
The Sun
7 hours ago
- The Sun
World Bank urges aid for conflict-hit economies amid US aid cuts
THE goal of ending extreme poverty around the globe remains elusive partly due to compounding challenges faced by economies in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) including food insecurity and weak government capacity, a report from the World Bank showed. The report released on Friday by the Washington-based lender calls on a scaling up of international support, debt relief and technical assistance at a time when the United States, the world's largest aid donor of the past decades, steps back. Extreme poverty is rising fast in economies hit by conflict and instability, according to the World Bank's first comprehensive report on FCS economies since the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 420 million people in conflict-ridden economies survive on less than $3 a day, more than the rest of the world combined, even as they are home to under 15% of the global population. The number is projected to rise to 435 million, or nearly 60% of the world's extreme poor, by 2030. 'FCS economies have become the epicenter of global poverty and food insecurity, a situation increasingly shaped by the frequency and intensity of conflict,' the World Bank report said. Economic output in FCS nations could stall or weaken further as conflict and violence have surged and intensified over the past years. The most high-intensity conflicts can shrink per capita GDP by some 20% after five years, according to the report. Conflict and war economies are home to 1 billion people and their populations average only six years of schooling, with life expectancy seven years shorter than in other developing countries. Since 2020, the per capita GDP in these economies has shrunk by an average of 1.8% per year, while it has expanded by 2.9% in other developing economies, the report said. 'Progress on poverty reduction has stalled since the mid-2010s, reflecting the compounded effects of intensifying conflict, economic fragility, and subdued growth,' it said. Targeted domestic reforms and coordinated, long-term global engagement are needed to lift those populations out of poverty, according to the World Bank. Measures need to focus on addressing root causes of conflict such as injustice and exclusion, as well as expanding access to education and healthcare, and improving infrastructure. Investment in tourism and agriculture could help create jobs for a growing working-age population. 'With sound policies and sustained global engagement, FCS economies can chart a better path toward development,' said the World Bank.
The Star
7 hours ago
- The Star
World Bank urges aid for economies in conflict as US pushes cuts
(Reuters) -The goal of ending extreme poverty around the globe remains elusive partly due to compounding challenges faced by economies in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) including food insecurity and weak government capacity, a report from the World Bank showed. The report released on Friday by the Washington-based lender calls on a scaling up of international support, debt relief and technical assistance at a time when the United States, the world's largest aid donor of the past decades, steps back. Extreme poverty is rising fast in economies hit by conflict and instability, according to the World Bank's first comprehensive report on FCS economies since the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 420 million people in conflict-ridden economies survive on less than $3 a day, more than the rest of the world combined, even as they are home to under 15% of the global population. The number is projected to rise to 435 million, or nearly 60% of the world's extreme poor, by 2030. "FCS economies have become the epicenter of global poverty and food insecurity, a situation increasingly shaped by the frequency and intensity of conflict," the World Bank report said. Economic output in FCS nations could stall or weaken further as conflict and violence have surged and intensified over the past years. The most high-intensity conflicts can shrink per capita GDP by some 20% after five years, according to the report. Conflict and war economies are home to 1 billion people and their populations average only six years of schooling, with life expectancy seven years shorter than in other developing countries. Since 2020, the per capita GDP in these economies has shrunk by an average of 1.8% per year, while it has expanded by 2.9% in other developing economies, the report said. 'Progress on poverty reduction has stalled since the mid-2010s, reflecting the compounded effects of intensifying conflict, economic fragility, and subdued growth,' it said. Targeted domestic reforms and coordinated, long-term global engagement are needed to lift those populations out of poverty, according to the World Bank. Measures need to focus on addressing root causes of conflict such as injustice and exclusion, as well as expanding access to education and healthcare, and improving infrastructure. Investment in tourism and agriculture could help create jobs for a growing working-age population. "With sound policies and sustained global engagement, FCS economies can chart a better path toward development," said the World Bank. (Reporting by Rodrigo Campos in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
