World Liberty Financial, Supported by Trump, Moves Substantial ETH and WBTC Assets to Coinbase: What to Expect Next?
Eric Trump and his family-operated World Liberty Financial (WLFI) have faced backlash from the cryptocurrency community.
Criticism arose following the recent liquidation of Ethereum [ETH], wrapped Bitcoin [WBTC], and various DeFi tokens totaling over $300 million, as reported by analytics company LookOnChain.
LookOnChain highlighted the transfer of 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 by World Liberty today.
Based on the data provided, the combined sale on Coinbase amounted to $316.8 million. Despite acquiring an additional $5M in ETH on the same day, this move seemed to surprise the cryptocurrency community.
WLFI Justifies ETH Sale
Eric Trump’s recent optimistic view on purchasing ETH was met with harsh criticism. Trump believed it was an opportune moment to buy ETH, yet the associated entity sold over $200 million worth of it.
One user referred to the action as a ‘literal crime,’ urging individuals to invest more in an asset only to later use it for exit liquidity.
“Literal crime lol. Bro just deposited ~$175M $ETH into Coinbase Prime (surely to buy).”
WLFI, however, defended itself against the allegations, stating that it had not ‘sold’ any tokens but was ‘reallocating assets’ for everyday business use. A section of their statement read,
“We’re making regular transfers of our crypto assets as part of standard treasury management, payment of fees and expenses, and to meet working capital needs.
The statement continued,
To clarify, we are not selling tokens—we are merely adjusting assets for routine business requirements.”
Nonetheless, Presto Research analyst Rick Maeda observed that traders were turning to put options (bets for downside protection) following the substantial drop and deleveraging event during the weekend.
“The drop, which led to ETH perp prices on Deribit Exchange falling from $3,285 to $2,065, has prompted a significant change in market positioning, as shown by the put-call ratio surging from last week’s calm 0.6 to over 2.5 today – indicating a rush for downside protection among market players.”
This signified a caution against potential declines in the upcoming days or hours, a sentiment that remained evident at the time of writing.
According to 25RR (Delta Risk Reversal), which monitors sentiment and premium for bullish bets versus bearish bets options, the outlook for the next four days was pessimistic.
In essence, there was substantial hedging activity in the first half of February to guard against further ETH drops.