Will WLFI heavily invest in coins during Trump's presidency, and will the BTC DeFi concept become popular again?

Source: Talking about Li and Talking about the Outside

Yesterday (January 20), I originally planned to stay up late to watch the live broadcast of Trump's inauguration ceremony, but I fell asleep before 10 PM. When I opened my eyes again, it was already 6 AM today, so I directly watched the "message replay" in the group. I found that many partners seemed to be paying attention to Trump's inauguration ceremony, but from everyone's discussions, it seemed to result in nothing but loneliness. As shown in the picture below.

Trump's inauguration ceremony and first-day executive orders did not mention cryptocurrency, so the market also experienced some pullbacks, especially the Memes coins related to TRUMP, which saw a noticeable decline. As shown in the picture below.

1. WLFI Invests Heavily in Coins During Trump's Inauguration

However, in the hours leading up to Trump's inauguration ceremony, WLFI (World Liberty Financial, a DeFi project supported by the Trump family) purchased over $100 million worth of cryptocurrency tokens. As of the writing of this article, the cryptocurrency holdings in WLFI's public wallet have reached a value of $334.8 million. As shown in the picture below.

Currently, WLFI's main holdings include ETH, AAVE, LINK, ENA, WBTC, TRX, and others. As shown in the picture below.

Of course, to raise more funds for purchasing coins, WLFI also thoughtfully opened up 5% of the WLFI token supply to those who are destined. As shown in the picture below.

Here we should add a little about the WLFI token:

This token was launched by World Liberty Financial on October 15, 2024, with a total supply of 100 billion tokens, and is only open to U.S.-recognized investors and non-U.S. citizens. The token cannot be sold or transferred, and its main purpose is to grant holders voting rights in community proposals (it is said that the project will also launch a decentralized exchange later). In the first round, they took 20% of the supply, with each WLFI token sold at a price of $0.015 on the official website to raise funds.

It is said that Sun Yuchen is the largest investor in this project, as he claimed last November to have purchased $30 million worth of WLFI tokens. Not long after (on November 27, 2024), WLFI announced on X: "We are honored to welcome Sun Yuchen as an advisor to WLFI." As shown in the picture below.

With Trump's ascension, Sun Yuchen provided an additional $45 million investment to World Liberty Financial yesterday (January 20). As shown in the picture below.

At this point, it is probably not hard to understand why World Liberty Financial would purchase WBTC and TRX. However, Sun Yuchen is indeed a big spender, willing to spend heavily to get close to Trump. Recently, I also saw some people spreading rumors that the reason the TRUMP token chose to launch on Saturday morning Beijing time was clearly due to Sun Yuchen's strategizing behind the scenes. However, these are just speculations from individuals online, and we cannot slander Sun Yuchen without evidence; after all, his character is still worth… well, let's leave this matter here for now.

2. Don't FOMO, Be Careful of Phishing

Currently, the FOMO sentiment among everyone is still quite serious. This morning, I noticed many people spreading tokens called POWER and HOLY, claiming that the former is a new MemeCoin launched by Trump, while the latter is a MemeCoin launched by the Catholic Church. I was puzzled as to why the Catholic Church was also getting involved in harvesting leeks? However, it was later confirmed that these were false messages (fake tokens). As shown in the picture below.

In recent days, there have been many phishing attempts online, so I advise everyone to pay more attention to the security of their wallet usage and not to authorize any unverified and unconfirmed protocols or contracts, to avoid having their wallet assets completely drained.

3. Binance to List Three Runes Tokens?

There has also been news in the past few days that Binance is expanding its BTC DeFi products and plans to list futures for three Runes tokens. As shown in the picture below.

However, this news only comes from a report by Cointelegraph, and we cannot confirm its authenticity. It is advisable not to rush into any news without your own judgment; DYOR.

In fact, back in December 2024, Binance Earn launched yield products for the BTC ecosystem, with the first supported service being Stake BTC Babylon, where users can stake their BTC and earn on-chain rewards from the Babylon protocol. As shown in the picture below.

If we follow this line of thought, if Binance really plans to expand its BTC DeFi product line, it is also possible that they will continue to list some BTC ecosystem-related tokens.

4. Ethereum is Striving to Defend 3200 Points and Break Through 3300 Points

Another DeFi-related news comes from the Ethereum Foundation (EF), which announced that it has officially invested 50,000 ETH (currently valued at approximately $160 million, accounting for 18.5% of the Ethereum Foundation's total holdings) to support the development of DeFi applications. As shown in the picture below.

It seems that the Ethereum Foundation, which has been criticized for only selling coins, has decided to do something, especially since ETH has been heavily criticized across the network recently, and the calls for a SOL revolution are also growing louder. If they don't do something soon, they might lose face.

Today, I also saw a partner in the group sharing a rather interesting picture, showing Ethereum continuously breaking through the 3300 mark, haha. As shown in the picture below.

However, while we can joke about it, we still maintain the viewpoint from our previous series of articles on Ethereum: we remain optimistic about Ethereum's performance; $4000 is likely not the end of this round of ETH bull market.

5. Continuing to Briefly Discuss DeFi

In fact, whether it's WLFI's heavy investment in DeFi-related concept coins or the rumors of Binance listing Bitcoin ecosystem's Runes tokens, they all point to one concept: DeFi.

Of course, the DeFi mentioned here is a relatively broad concept, which has now been subdivided into various derivative concepts such as DeFAI, PayFi, CeFi, etc. I remember in the article at the beginning of the year (January 1), we listed several key points to watch for in 2025, which included not only AI, MemeCoin, and RWA but also DeFi. In simple terms, we still have a positive outlook on the overall potential performance of DeFi this year. If the Trump administration can introduce some favorable policies, it is foreseeable that some projects are likely to take off.

We have discussed the topic of ETH DeFi quite a bit before, so at the end of today's article, let's take a look at some situations in BTC DeFi based on the aforementioned Runes report:

Through on-chain data, we can see that since November and December of last year, the TVL of BTC DeFi-related protocols has significantly increased, with the total locked value now exceeding $7 billion. As shown in the picture below.

Although there is still a certain gap compared to Ethereum's $70.7 billion and Solana's $13 billion, let's not forget that BTC DeFi is actually a concept that has only emerged (developed) since this cycle began.

Additionally, according to data from the Rootdata platform, there are currently over 400 protocols related to the Bitcoin ecosystem, with more than 100 of them being DeFi protocols. As shown in the picture below. It can be said that the development is relatively fast.

As for the number of tokens related to the Bitcoin ecosystem (including inscriptions, runes, and other concepts), there are even more, countless. From the current situation of different protocols' locked amounts, most of the value is locked in a few leading staking protocols like Babylon and Lombard. As shown in the picture below.

Moreover, looking at the changes in TVL of several protocols, the main points of change also began to grow around November and December of last year. Combined with the timing of Binance Earn mentioned above, it can indeed lead to some associations.

Currently, BTC's market capitalization has exceeded $2 trillion, but most BTC remains idle in wallets, seemingly generating no benefits. This is likely one of the reasons why many project parties are optimistic about the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem (willing to develop and invest in this direction), as Bitcoin's liquidity still has a lot of untapped potential.

During the peak of the Bitcoin ecosystem concept last year, the hottest related concept besides inscriptions was probably BTC L2. The difference is that inscriptions have seen several waves of wealth creation, while BTC L2 seems to have made a lot of noise but little action, with fewer and fewer people participating. Although most people are still focused on Solana for MemeCoin, some data dimensions suggest that the activity in the Bitcoin ecosystem is slowly returning.

For example, let's take a look at the Net Flows (capital flows) dimension:

In the past year, BTC ecosystem Net Flows ranked 13th.

In the past three months, BTC ecosystem Net Flows ranked 8th.

Moreover, some well-known Bitcoin ecosystem protocols seem to be undergoing some positive updates and developments, such as:

In the fourth quarter of 2024, Stacks underwent the Nakamoto upgrade, which aimed to improve Bitcoin-based DeFi, also known as BTCFi. At the same time, they launched sBTC, which is supported by BTC at a 1:1 ratio, enabling transfers between BTC L1 and L2, opening up new possibilities for using Bitcoin in DeFi without relying on centralized solutions like Wrapped Bitcoin.

In January 2025, Babylon partnered with OKX Web3 wallet, and Babylon's Bitcoin staking protocol began to integrate with the OKX Web3 wallet.

And so on…

Additionally, since many new projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem basically started appearing in 2023 and 2024, they currently have not launched their mainnet or issued their own tokens. With the maturation and mainnet launches of more related projects, it is expected that this year will also see many projects' TGE (Token Generation Event).

However, we have only discussed the potential opportunities for BTC DeFi this year from a data and theoretical perspective. In fact, regarding Bitcoin's utility, the current network is mainly divided into two factions: the conservatives believe that Bitcoin should only serve as digital gold to store value, while the radicals tend to favor releasing Bitcoin's liquidity and having a more extensive application ecosystem. But regardless of how conservatives and radicals argue, Bitcoin's $2 trillion market cap is there; even if only a portion of its liquidity participates in DeFi-related activities, it would be enough to give some related protocols (tokens) speculative value. Moreover, even if the conservatives are unwilling to participate, isn't there still WBTC? (However, it was also because Sun Yuchen got involved with WBTC that it was delisted from Coinbase on December 19 last year.) The recent actions of WLFI seem to be a demonstration for everyone.

One more thing, the biggest tailwind for the DeFi sector should be the regulatory policy inclination. As for when this tailwind will start blowing, you can take a guess?