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Trump-Linked Crypto Deal Sparks Controversy

The Trump family’s new cryptocurrency, WLFI, is at the center of a controversial deal with trading platform Alt5 Sigma. This comes shortly after Alt5 Sigma announced a $1.5 billion crypto treasury strategy, which now appears to be directly tied to transactions benefiting Trump-linked entities.

According to reports, the Trump family’s crypto arm acquired Alt5 Sigma. The trading platform then raised $750 million from investors and used that money to buy WLFI tokens directly from the family’s crypto firm, World Liberty. This “circular” deal could net the Trump family around $500 million, since they control most of the token sales. These types of transactions are uncommon in traditional finance and raise concerns about transparency, conflicts of interest, and the potential for artificially inflated demand for the token.

The deal is happening while Alt5 Sigma is already facing scrutiny from the SEC for alleged earnings inflation and stock manipulation. Despite this, Alt5 Sigma raised a separate $1.5 billion through stock offerings, with WLFI tokens at the core of its new crypto strategy. On the WLFI side, the project has formed a partnership with BONK.fun, which will serve as its official Solana launchpad.

As WLFI prepares for its launch on Binance, early backers are already seeing huge gains. One supporter, who registered the domain “trumpisthebest.eth,” reportedly spent $347,000 on WLFI tokens, and that investment is now worth around $8.5 million.

September 2025, Cryptoniteuae

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Vaibhavv Ali
Vaibhavv Ali

Vaibhavv Ali is the founder and editor of Cryptonite (cryptonite.ae), an independent digital-asset news and analysis publication with a UAE focus. He covers virtual-asset regulation — VARA, ADGM and the UAE Central Bank — alongside real-world-asset tokenization, stablecoins and agentic AI in finance. Every Cryptonite article is human-edited and its sources are linked. He is also a celebrated speaker and host.

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