UAE fund buys $100 million of Trump's World Liberty tokens
A United Arab Emirates-based fund has bought $100 million worth of digital tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture of US 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 tokenized 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 US 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.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
2 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
5 Greek Government Officials Resign Over EU Farming Subsidy Fraud Allegations
Five high-ranking Greek government officials, including a minister and three deputy ministers, resigned Friday following allegations of involvement in corruption over the mismanagement of European Union farming subsidies. The case stems from the alleged mismanagement of EU subsidies for agriculture between 2019 and 2022 by a government agency known by its Greek acronym OPEKEPE, tasked with handling the funds. According to the European Public Prosecutor's Office, a significant number of individuals received subsidies through the agency based on false declarations, including claims of owning or leasing pastures that were in fact public land. The suspects continued submitting false declarations of livestock until 2024, maintaining subsidy payment entitlement, it added. The prosecutor's office sent a hefty case file to Greece's parliament earlier this week, including allegations of the possible involvement of government ministers in an organized fraud scheme. Members of parliament enjoy immunity from prosecution in Greece that can only be lifted by parliamentary vote. In a resignation letter to the prime minister Friday, Migration and Asylum Minister Makis Voridis maintained his innocence, saying he was stepping down in order to concentrate on clearing his name. Voridis served as agriculture minister from mid-2019 to early 2021. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis accepted his resignation as well as those of the deputy ministers of foreign affairs, agriculture and food, and digital governance and of the general secretary of agriculture and food. Replacements for all five will be named in the coming days, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said in a statement. The European Commission announced earlier this month it would reduce the amount of farm subsidies for Greece by five percent, for a total of 392 million euros.
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
German lawmakers vote to suspend family reunions for many migrants
BERLIN: German lawmakers voted Friday to suspend family reunions for many migrants, part of a drive by the new conservative-led government for a tougher approach to migration. Parliament's lower house voted 444-135 to suspend the possibility of family reunions for two years for migrants who have 'subsidiary protection,' a status that falls short of asylum. At the end of March, more than 388,000 people living in Germany had the status, which was granted to many people fleeing Syria's civil war. New Chancellor Friedrich Merz made tougher migration policy a central plank of his campaign for Germany's election in February. Just after he took office in early May, the government stationed more police at the border and said some asylum-seekers trying to enter Europe's biggest economy would be turned away. The bill approved Friday is the first legislation on migration since Merz took office. It will suspend rules dating to 2018 that allowed up to 1,000 close relatives per month to join the migrants granted limited protection, with authorities making case-by-case decisions on humanitarian grounds rather than granting an automatic right for reunions. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told lawmakers that the change would result in 12,000 fewer people being able to come to Germany each year and 'break a business model' for smugglers. People often know they won't get full recognition as refugees, 'but they set off for Germany because it is known that, even without asylum recognition ... you can have your family follow,' Dobrindt said. 'That is a significant pull effect and we are removing this pull effect today.' Dobrindt said 'our country's capacity for integration simply has a limit.' Liberal opposition lawmakers decried the government's approach. Marcel Emmerich, of the Greens, described the legislation as 'an attack on the core of every society, on a truly central value — the family.' 'Anyone who wants integration must bring families together,' he said. The far-right, anti-migration Alternative for Germany described the move as a very small step in the right direction. German governments have for years faced pressure to curb migration as shelters across the country filled up. The administration of Merz's predecessor, Olaf Scholz, already had taken some measures including the introduction of checks on all Germany's borders. Asylum applications declined from 329,120 in 2023 to 229,751 last year and have continued to fall this year.
Saudi Gazette
4 hours ago
- Saudi Gazette
Iran's FM says talks with Washington 'complicated' by US strikes on nuclear sites
TEHRAN — Iran's top diplomat said on Friday that the possibility of new negotiations with the United States on his country's nuclear programme has been "complicated" by US strikes on three of the sites, which he conceded had caused "serious damage." The US was one of the parties to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which saw Iran agree to limit its uranium enrichment programme in exchange for sanctions relief and other benefits. That deal unravelled in 2018 after President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out during his first term, calling it the "worst deal ever negotiated." Trump had suggested he is interested in new talks with Iran and said the two sides would meet next week. In an interview on Iranian state television broadcast late on Thursday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left open the possibility that his country would again enter talks on its nuclear program, but suggested it would not be anytime soon. "No agreement has been made for resuming the negotiations," he said. "No time has been set, no promise has been made and we haven't even talked about restarting the talks." The American decision to intervene militarily "made it more complicated and more difficult" for talks on Iran's nuclear programme, Araghchi said. In Friday prayers, many imams stressed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's message from the day before that the war had been a victory for Iran. Cleric Hamzeh Khalili, who also is the deputy chief justice of Iran, vowed during a prayer service in Tehran that the courts would prosecute people accused of spying for Israel "in a special way." During the 12-day conflict with Israel, Iran hanged several people who it already had in custody on espionage charges, sparking fears from activists that it could conduct a wave of executions after the fighting ended. Authorities have reportedly detained dozens in various cities on the charge of cooperation with Israel. Israel attacked Iran on 13 June, targeting its nuclear sites, defence systems, high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists in waved of strikes. In almost two weeks of fighting, Israel said it killed some 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, while hitting eight nuclear-related facilities and more than 720 military infrastructure sites. More than 1,000 people were killed, including at least 417 civilians, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Activists group. Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted but those that got through caused damage in many areas and killed 28 people. Israeli military spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin said Friday that in some areas it had exceeded its operational goals, but needed to remain vigilant. "We are under no illusion, the enemy has not changed its intentions," he said. The US stepped in on Sunday to hit Iran's three most important nuclear sites with a wave of cruise missiles and bunker-buster bombs dropped by B-2 bombers, designed to penetrate deep into the ground to damage the heavily-fortified targets. Iran, in retaliation, fired missiles at the US military base, Al Udeida, in Qatar on Monday but caused no known casualties. Trump said the American attacks "completely and fully obliterated" Iran's nuclear programme, though Khamenei on Thursday accused the US president of exaggerating the damage, saying the strikes did not "achieve anything significant." There has been speculation that Iran moved much of its highly-enriched uranium before the strikes, something that it told the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that it planned to do. Even if that turns out to be true, IAEA Director Rafael Grossi told Radio France International that the damage done to the Fordow site, which is built into a mountain, "is very, very, very considerable." Among other things, he said, centrifuges are "quite precise machines" and it's "not possible" that the concussion from multiple 30,000-pound bombs would not have caused "important physical damage." "These centrifuges are no longer operational," he said. Araghchi himself acknowledged "the level of damage is high and it's serious damage." He added that Iran had not yet decided whether to allow IAEA inspectors to assess the damage, but they would be kept out "for the time being". — Euronews
