In brief
- TRUMP and WLFI have suffered some of the biggest losses today among top-100 coins, falling by double digits in the past 24 hours.
- Their decline follows the announcement of a Democrat investigation into a business deal between Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan and World Liberty Financial prior to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
- Analysts suggest that the wider market selloff may stabilize once leverage clears and ETF inflows resume.
Official Trump (TRUMP) and World Liberty Financial (WLFI) have fallen 14.6% and 10.8% in the past 24 hours, as the cryptocurrency market continues to weather steep losses amid falling sentiment.
TRUMP is now priced at $3.41, marking a 24.7% loss in a week, a 37.7% drop in a month, and a 95% collapse since the Trump-linked meme coin hit a record high of $37.43 in January of last year, per CoinGecko data.
Meanwhile, World Liberty Financial’s governance and utility token, WLFI, has sunk to $0.111, a 25.3% drop in a week, a 34.7% fall in a month, and a 67% decline since reaching an ATH of $0.3313 last September.
Few coins have escaped today’s sharp fall, with the crypto market’s total capitalization dropping by 2.8% in the past 24 hours, to $2.37 trillion.
But while Bitcoin and other leading tokens have suffered in recent days, the two Trump family-linked tokens have suffered more than most, with their situation exacerbated by recent news.
World Liberty Financial deal faces House probe
Yesterday, Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) launched an investigation into “how conflicts of interest may be influencing U.S. government policies” in relation to sectors in which the U.S. is in competition with China.
In particular, Khanna has written a letter to World Liberty Financial, requesting information on the $500 million investment deal the Trump family-owned company made with ‘Spy Sheikh’ Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the UAE’s royal family.
The launch of this investigation follows a report from the Wall Street Journal, which on January 31 reported that the investment preceded a subsequent deal in which the Trump administration agreed to send roughly 500,000 advanced AI chips to the UAE, including to Tahnoon’s own AI firm, G42.
The Biden administration had previously blocked similar deals, on the grounds that G42 had links to the sanctioned technology firm Huawei, as well as other Chinese companies.
Based on such reporting, the press release announcing the Khanna-led investigation argued that “it’s wrong to implicate the President’s personal financial interests in policy decisions.”
The investigation is also seeking info regarding World Liberty Financial’s “facilitation” of a $2 billion investment by Abu Dhabi-based MGX in Binance, which investment was made in USD1, a stablecoin launched and operated by the company.
The announcement of this investigation follows comments earlier this week from Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who suggested that the previously undisclosed investment from Tahnoon amounted to “open corruption.”
World Liberty Financial counts Donald Trump and Steve Witkoff, the president’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, as “co-founders emeritus.” Witkoff’s son Zach serves as CEO of the firm, which asserts that neither Trump nor his family members hold any role as “director, officer or employee.”
World Liberty Financial has been contacted for comment.
Crypto market slumps
According to eToro analyst Simon Peters, risk-off sentiment is continuing to weigh heavily on the market and wider industry.
He told Decrypt, “Recent geopolitical tensions, macroeconomic uncertainty, disappointing earnings forecasts and the threat of quantum computing is causing institutional investors to rethink tech valuations and their exposure to crypto.”
Peters notes that spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen some of their biggest ever days in terms of outflows recently, which has caused selling pressure and also precipitated a cascade of liquidations.
He added, “For the technical analysts, Bitcoin is not far off its 200-week moving average [currently between $55,000 and $58,000], which historically has acted as a strong level of support following major corrections – 2015, 2018, 2020 (during the Covid pandemic) and most recently in 2022.”
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Source: https://decrypt.co/357179/official-trump-meme-coin-wlfi-lead-losses-following-world-liberty-financial-probe
