Whales, or big cryptocurrency investors, have lost millions of dollars by betting on the price appreciation of the Trump family-linked World Liberty Financial (WLFI) token.
Since its launch on Monday, the WLFI token’s price fell by over 40%, despite a large-scale token burn event that permanently reduced the token’s circulating supply, aiming to tighten supply and boost the value of the remaining tokens on the market.
Despite the over 40% decline, some of the pre-sale holders are still showing confidence in the presidentially endorsed token.
Out of more than 85,000 pre-sale participants, 60% were still holding the token, while only 29% had fully sold, wrote blockchain data platform Bubblemaps, in a Wednesday X post.
Whales lose millions on Trump-linked WLFI’s 40% dip, despite 47 million burn
Big crypto investors, or whales, were suffering millions in losses on the Trump family-linked World Liberty Financial (WLFI) token, which continued to decline despite a proposal to reduce the circulating supply.
Whale wallet 0x432 lost more than $1.6 million after closing a 3x leveraged WLFI long position, according to Onchain Lens.
“The moral of the story: never be in FOMO,” short for fear of missing out, wrote the platform in a Thursday X post, referencing the whale’s hasty investment move.
The investor had opened a second long position on the WLFI token just 15 hours after closing a previous one with a $915,000 profit, only to lose the $1.6 million.
Confidence in Trump-linked token weakens
Other whales were also exiting WLFI positions at a loss, signaling waning confidence in the Trump-affiliated token’s price outlook.
The whale selling came a day after the WLFI platform burned 47 million tokens on Wednesday, permanently removing them in a bid to tighten supply and boost the value of the remaining tokens.
The token burn was not enough to stop its post-launch decline, as the WLFI price fell another 18% in the 24 hours leading up to 8:31 am UTC Thursday, marking a total decline of 41% since it was launched on Monday, according to CoinMarketCap data.
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Avalanche activity driven by DEXs, trading bots, whale memecoin speculation
Smart contract blockchain Avalanche recorded a consistent surge in blockchain activity, as analysts pointed to growing decentralized trading activities and returning crypto whale speculation on the next emerging memecoin.
Avalanche’s transaction growth surpassed all other blockchains the past week, increasing 66% to 11.9 million transactions across more than 181,000 active addresses, signaling growing investor mindshare focusing on the blockchain.
The milestone occurred after a “landmark effort” by the US Department of Commerce, which adopted Avalanche, along with nine other public decentralized blockchains, to publish its real gross domestic product (GDP), Cointelegraph reported on Aug. 29.
Despite Avalanche’s growing institutional and governmental adoption, we “cannot at this point attribute this to the US Government adopting Avalanche for its GDP data,” said Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at the Nansen crypto intelligence platform.
The network’s increasing blockchain activity was mainly driven by decentralized finance (DeFi) traders, miner extractable value (MEV) trading bots and whales speculating on the next big memecoin launch, the analyst told Cointelegraph, adding:
“The transaction surge is driven by: 60% DeFi protocol activity (Trader Joe, Aave, Benqi), 25% Automated trading bots and MEV, and 10% Whale trading and memecoin speculation […].”
The research analyst said that the additional 5% of activity was attributed to blockchain gaming and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
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DeFi lending rises 72% on institutional interest, RWA collateral adoption
Decentralized lending protocols are surging in total value and set to capitalize on the growing institutional adoption of stablecoins and tokenized assets, according to Binance Research.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocols are automated systems that facilitate lending and borrowing for investors via smart contracts, eliminating the need for financial intermediaries like banks.
DeFi lending protocols have risen more than 72% year-to-date (YTD), from $53 billion at the beginning of 2025 to over $127 billion in cumulative total value locked (TVL) on Wednesday, according to Binance Research.
This explosive growth is attributed to DeFi lending protocols benefiting from accelerated institutional adoption of stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
“As stablecoin and tokenized asset adoption accelerates, DeFi lending protocols are increasingly positioned to facilitate institutional participation,” wrote Binance Research in a Wednesday report shared exclusively with Cointelegraph.
cointelegraph.com