World Liberty burns 47M tokens in bid to pump price as slide continues
World Liberty Financial has turned to burning tokens in an attempt to stem a price drawdown its cryptocurrency has seen since it started trading publicly on Monday
Eric and Don Jr., along with their younger brother Barron—yes, Barron Trump is listed as a co-founder of World Liberty Financial—have been selling governance tokens that offer buyers almost nothing beyond limited voting rights on a platform that doesn’t actually exist yet. The promised peer-to-peer lending system remains vaporware. The WLFI token trades at 14 cents, down 65% from its brief September peak
And 2 days ago, this from Reuters:
How Reuters tallied the Trump Organization’s crypto income
October 28, 202510:00 AM GMTUpdated October 28, 2025
Most of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s business empire is privately held, with few reporting requirements and little transparency, so calculating a reliable estimate of the Trump Organization’s earnings from crypto and other sources for the first half of 2025 required some sleuthing.
The process entailed reviewing the president’s official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other publicly available sources. Where the family’s share of revenue from certain ventures could not be determined, Reuters made estimates that were vetted by four finance professors, two certified public accountants and an accounting professor, all of whom have taught courses or advised clients on crypto. They all agreed that Reuters’ approach was sound.
Ultimately, Reuters calculated that the Trump Organization earned $802 million from the family’s crypto ventures during the first half of 2025, overwhelming income from its traditional businesses like real estate, licensing deals and golf clubs, which together generated $62 million during the period.
Reuters shared a summary and an extensive spreadsheet of its calculations with the White House, Trump family members and the Trump Organization, and executives of the crypto businesses and requested comment. None of them responded.
And Shalev points out how Guren Zhou and Justin Sun are helpful in building World Financial.
Dubai this May, Eric Trump sat down with Guren “Bobby” Zhou, a Chinese businessman under investigation in Britain for money laundering. Chinese courts in three separate cases found Zhou and a family member failed to repay loans totaling $2.4 million. Weeks after that Dubai meeting, an entity Zhou is connected to announced a $100 million purchase of World Liberty tokens—sending roughly $75 million to the Trump family under the company’s distribution agreement.
Hong Kong crypto billionaire Justin Sun bought $75 million in tokens after the SEC charged him in 2023 with fraud and selling unregistered securities. The commission paused Sun’s case in February, weeks after he announced his massive token purchase. Last week, Trump pardoned him entirely. Sun’s response on social media: he would “do everything we can to help make America the Capital of Crypto.”
The Financial Times looked into the UK’s ‘Guren “Bobby”Zhou entrepeneurial efforts after seeing the Reuters investigation:
On June 26, an obscure entity called Aqua1 Foundation, which said it was based in the United Arab Emirates, announced it was buying $100 million of cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty. It was the single largest known purchase of the so-called WLFI tokens at the time. The Chinese businessman who met with Eric Trump in Dubai was Guren “Bobby” Zhou, who has executive roles in multiple businesses and who is under investigation in Britain for money laundering, according to that nation’s National Crime Agency and a document filed in an immigration case at London’s Royal Courts of Justice.
So we also know about the Trump pardon for Justin Sun:
Sun, who was born in China but now a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis, is facing civil charges in the United States for fraud and market manipulation, but his SEC lawsuit was paused earlier this year when the Trump administration dropped virtually all of its lawsuits and investigations against alleged crypto violators.
No doubt we will all follow the ups and downs of World Financial.
My Past Lives theme may follow on from the following news which emerged yesterday, thanks to Bloomberg, regarding the investigation into money laundering activities of those in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal network, prior to the ‘sweetheart deal’ which stopped further investigation:
The following is from another site commenting on the Bloomberg article:
October 31st, 2025
Internal emails, reported by Bloomberg, now show they were also tracing his finances, questioning whether his empire was being used to fund or conceal criminal activity.
The evidence points to a broader, more complex inquiry that reached into Epstein’s six businesses, major banks, and one of his wealthiest clients, Les Wexner.
The investigation, however, stopped short when a plea deal was struck, ending a probe that could have exposed much more.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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