Trump-Backed World Liberty Financial moves major ETH & WBTC holdings to Coinbase – What’s next?
World Liberty Financials has defended itself against selling crypto assets, stating its for standard treasury operations.
- Eric Trump believes it’s the right time to bid ETH at current levels.
- However, his family-run firm, WLFI, ‘sold’ over $300M of digital assets, dominated by ETH.
Eric Trump and their family-run World Liberty Financial (WLFI) have elicited crypto community backlash.
The criticism followed WLFI’s recent sale of Ethereum [ETH], wrapped Bitcoin [WBTC], and other DeFi tokens worth over $300M, according to aggregated data by analytics firm LookOnChain.
“ Today, World Liberty also transferred 86,296 $ETH($235M), 647 $WBTC($65.5M), 256,315 $LINK($5.4M), 19,399 $AAVE($5.26M), 5.78M $ENA($3.88M), 2.4M $MOVE($1.57M) and 134,216 $ONDO($190K) to #CoinbasePrime,” noted LookOnChain.
From the data shared, the collective sell-off on Coinbase was worth $316.8 million. Despite acquiring another $5M ETH $5M on the same day, the move appeared to have startled the crypto community.
WLFI defends ETH sale
In fact, Eric Trump’s recent bullish call to buy ETH was met with scathing criticism. Trump believed it was the ideal time to buy ETH, yet its affiliate sold over $200M worth of it.
One user termed the move a ‘literal crime,’ asking people to double down on an asset only to use them as exit liquidity.
“Literal crime lol. Bro just deposited ~$175M $ETH into Coinbase Prime (surely to buy).”
On its part, WLFI defended itself from the accusations, stating that it hadn’t ‘sold’ any tokens but was ‘reallocating assets’ to ordinary business. Part of its statement read,
“We’re making routine movements of our crypto holdings as part of regular treasury management, and payment of fees and expenses and to address working capital requirements.
He continued,
To be clear, we are not selling tokens—we are simply reallocating assets for ordinary business purposes.”
That said, Presto Research analyst Rick Maeda noted that traders jumped on put options (bets for downside protections) following the massive drop and deleveraging event over the weekend.
“The move, which saw ETH perp prices on Deribit Exchange plunge from $3,285 to $2,065, has triggered a significant shift in market positioning, as evidenced by the put-call ratio surging from last week’s relatively calm 0.6 to above 2.5 today – indicating a rush for downside protection among market participants”
This suggested a caution against potential declines in the next few days or hours, and a similar sentiment was still present at press time.
According to 25RR (Delta Risk Reversal), which tracks sentiment and premium for calls (bullish bets) relative to puts options, the next four days were negative.
Simply put, there was heavy hedging activity in the first half of February to safeguard against extra ETH declines.
