World Liberty Financial, the Aave fork backed by President-elect Donald Trump’s friends and family, announced on Tuesday that it is appointing Tron founder Justin Sun as an advisor.
The news comes a day after HTX, the crypto exchange formerly known as Huobi and closely associated with Sun, invested $30 million in World Liberty, according to onchain data.
“We are thrilled to invest $30 million in World Liberty Financial @worldlibertyfi as its largest investor,” Sun said in a pinned post on X. “The U.S. is becoming the blockchain hub, and Bitcoin owes it to @realDonaldTrump! TRON is committed to making America great again and leading innovation. Let's go!”
World Liberty Financial, a decentralized lending platform launched in September 2014, is one of Trump’s largest steps into the crypto world to date. Formerly a skeptic, the incoming U.S. president has aligned himself with crypto interests in recent months and signaled he would curtail the tight regulation of digital assets in the country.
Although highly anticipated, the sale of World Liberity’s governance tokens has been off to a rough start. The project initially aimed to sell $300 million worth of tokens but rolled that back to $30 million in late October after seeing lackluster support.
According to the latest filings, World Liberty sold only $21 million worth of WLFI tokens prior to Sun's purchase on Monday. The sale was limited to non-U.S. and qualified U.S. investors.
Tron is one of the largest blockchains by market cap. TRX tokens were launched initially using the ERC-20 token standard and later deployed on the native Tron network. The token was down about 4.6% on Tuesday.
In its announcement, World Liberty noted that Sun graduated of Trump’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, and recently purchased a conceptual artwork of a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction.
World Liberty co-founder Zak Folkman noted that there “have been a number of similarly significant purchases” in line with Sun’s investment in recent weeks. It is unclear whether the firm will take on additional advisors.
The Block has reached out to Tron representatives for a statement.
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