Did Trump’s token reach enemies?

November 19, 2025

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Reading time: 5 minutes

Key points:

  • U.S. senators have raised concerns that World Liberty Financial may have sold its WLFI tokens to buyers linked to North Korea, Russia and Iran, prompting calls for an urgent investigation.

  • Lawmakers say the token sales could pose national security risks and create a financial conflict of interest due to the Trump family’s deep involvement in the company.

News - World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm closely tied to the Trump family, is facing renewed scrutiny after U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed urged federal regulators to investigate alleged WLFI token sales to sanctioned foreign entities. 

The senators sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlining concerns that traders connected to the Lazarus Group, an Iranian exchange, a ruble-based sanctions-evasion tool and Tornado Cash purchased WLFI governance tokens.

According to the watchdog group Accountable.US, one January token sale worth about $10,000 went to a trader linked to a wallet that U.S. officials have since sanctioned. The senators argue that such transactions could give foreign adversaries influence over WLFI’s governance while exposing the United States to national security risks.

The controversy is amplified by the Trump family’s financial stake. An affiliated entity, DT Marks DEFI LLC, holds 22.5 billion WLFI tokens and receives 75% of revenue from token sales. Warren and Reed warn that this arrangement could raise conflict-of-interest concerns, particularly as Congress considers legislation that may alter oversight requirements for governance tokens.

Company response - WLFI has denied the allegations. The firm says it follows strict AML and KYC standards and rejected millions of dollars from buyers who failed compliance checks. It maintains that there is no conflict of interest between its private operations and government positions.

Accuracy concerns - A separate analysis by blockchain researcher Nick Bax suggests that at least one alleged North Korea-linked transaction may stem from a false positive.

Bax found that a memecoin contract automatically routed tokens from a labeled Lazarus address, which may have created the mistaken link. He also noted that the user involved did not actually transact with a sanctioned entity, but still faced consequences as a result of the misidentification.

Saylor doubles down as Strategy eyes S&P 500 despite BTC volatility

Key points:

  • Strategy is still viewed as a potential S&P 500 candidate even after Bitcoin’s sharp drop and the company’s steep NAV compression.

  • Michael Saylor says Bitcoin’s long-term volatility is declining and insists the company can withstand an 80 to 90% drawdown.

News - The recent market correction has pulled Bitcoin below the $90,000 mark and wiped out its gains for 2025, yet Strategy remains in focus as analysts say the company is still on track for possible S&P 500 inclusion this year. 

A Matrixport report argues that Strategy’s debt risks remain manageable and that a forced liquidation of its holdings is not a near-term threat. The researchers added that while the company’s share price fell from a peak of $474 to about $207, its valuation now appears relatively inexpensive when compared with Bitcoin.

Separate findings from 10X Research estimates a 70% chance that Strategy will be added to the index by year-end. Strategy recently received a B- credit rating from S&P Global Ratings, the first time a Bitcoin-treasury-heavy firm has been assessed by the agency.

Saylor maintains confidence that volatility is trending lower. In a Fox Business appearance, he said Bitcoin’s annualized volatility has fallen from around 80% in 2020 to roughly 50% today. He expects incremental declines as the market matures and predicts that Bitcoin will eventually sit at around one and a half times the volatility of the S&P 500 while outperforming it by the same factor.

Strategy now holds 649,870 BTC valued at $59.59 billion. Its mNAV ratio has slipped to 1.11 from 1.52 at Bitcoin’s October all-time high. Saylor reiterates that the company is built to handle deep downturns in Bitcoin’s price.

Corporate treasury stress - Several smaller digital asset treasuries, including Bitmine, Metaplanet, Sharplink Gaming, Upexi and DeFi Development Corp, have seen their mNAV ratios fall below 1, limiting their ability to raise capital for additional Bitcoin purchases.

Strategy keeps accumulating - Strategy bought 8,178 BTC worth $835 million in its latest purchase. The company also made additional acquisitions throughout October and November, consistent with Saylor’s stance that Strategy intends to keep accumulating despite market turbulence.

Leaked screenshots show Coinbase plotting Kalshi-powered prediction markets push

Key points:

  • Leaked screenshots suggest Coinbase is building a branded prediction markets platform that runs through Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated event contracts exchange.

  • At the same time, Coinbase is rolling out a USDC-focused business platform in Singapore, which supports payments and treasury functions for local companies.

News - Tech researcher Jane Manchun Wong has uncovered what appears to be an unreleased Coinbase prediction markets website, complete with branded pages, FAQs, and onboarding guides. 

The screenshots show a Coinbase interface that routes users into event contracts offered by Coinbase Financial Markets, the exchange’s derivatives arm, through Kalshi.

Kalshi already operates as a designated contract market under CFTC oversight, and the images suggest Coinbase will use that infrastructure to list regulated markets covering economics, sports, science, politics, and technology. 

Users would reportedly be able to trade using USDC or U.S. dollars, consistent with previous indications that Coinbase intends to expand USDC’s utility across its products.

The project aligns with Coinbase’s public goal to become an “everything exchange” spanning spot trading, derivatives, and event-based products. The company already serves as custodian for Kalshi’s USDC reserves through a partnership formalized on November 13, which provides cold storage, segregated accounts, and institutional-grade security for funds supporting Kalshi’s event contracts.

Regulation first, launch details later - While the leaked interface appears fully designed, Coinbase has not confirmed a launch date or regional availability. Several operational elements also remain unaddressed in the sources, including fees and how event outcomes will be administered under Kalshi’s rulebook.

Singapore becomes a testbed for Coinbase Business - In parallel, Coinbase has launched its first international rollout of Coinbase Business in Singapore. 

The platform gives companies access to USDC payouts, global transfers, real-time SGD banking rails through Standard Chartered, and APIs that connect crypto treasury tools with existing payroll and vendor systems. These features reflect Coinbase’s push to offer regulated payment and treasury infrastructure to businesses in markets with clear supervisory frameworks.

Cloudflare outage knocks crypto platforms offline, rekindles debate over Web3’s centralization

Key points:

  • A major Cloudflare outage took down large parts of the internet, disrupting crypto exchanges, DeFi front ends, block explorers, wallets, and even X and ChatGPT.

  • The incident exposed Web3’s practical reliance on centralized internet infrastructure despite claims of decentralization.

News - Cloudflare’s widespread outage on November 18 caused severe disruptions across thousands of websites and applications. Beginning at 11:20 UTC, a database permissions issue in Cloudflare’s bot management system caused a feature file to grow beyond its limit, triggering HTTP 5xx errors across the network. 

Core services such as CDN, security features, Workers KV, Access authentication, and dashboard logins experienced major disruption until full recovery at 17:06 UTC.

Cloudflare clarified that there was no cyberattack. The failure stemmed from an internal configuration issue that cascaded through the system. This marked the company’s most severe outage since 2019. 

The incident took down around 20% of webpages, including major crypto platforms such as Coinbase, Blockchain.com, Ledger, BitMEX, Arbiscan, Toncoin, and DefiLlama.

The outage reignited debate around decentralization in the crypto sector. Although blockchains remained functional, several major DeFi interfaces and centralized platforms relying on Cloudflare went offline. 

Commentators highlighted the contrast between crypto’s decentralization narrative and its operational dependence on Web2 infrastructure. EthStorage and Tribe Payments emphasized that centralized providers introduce unavoidable single points of failure across critical online systems.

Industry voices call for DePIN - The incident intensified calls for decentralized physical infrastructure networks. DePIN supporters argue that distributing compute and networking capacity across contributors can reduce reliance on single-service operators. 

Gaimin’s leadership noted that spreading cloud resources across globally dispersed hardware can help prevent similar failures.

Scaling limitations highlight the gap - Some experts urged caution in interpreting the outage as a Web3 failure. Helius Labs’ CEO, Mert, pointed out that Cloudflare handles traffic at a scale far beyond anything processed by blockchain networks to date, illustrating the gap between decentralized architectures and established web infrastructure. 

The episode highlights the ongoing challenge of developing decentralized systems that can support comparable levels of global demand.

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Did you know?

  • The Vatican is experimenting with NFTs to preserve rare manuscripts - The Vatican Apostolic Library has launched a Web3 pilot issuing non-transferable NFTs to supporters, giving them curated digital access to selected manuscript images as part of a broader digitisation effort.

  • Ethiopia is becoming an unlikely crypto mining hotspot - The country has quietly grown into one of the world’s fastest-rising Bitcoin mining hubs, powered by abundant hydropower and a government hungry to monetise its excess electricity.

  • Weather insurance is getting a blockchain upgrade - Pilot programs in India are testing crop insurance payouts triggered automatically by satellite weather data, using smart contracts to eliminate delays and bypass the usual mountain of paperwork for farmers.

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Top 3 coins of the day

Starknet (STRK)

Key points:

  • STRK pushed toward $0.23 after extending its strong November rally from the $0.11 region.

  • The MA ribbon stayed firmly stacked in bullish alignment as RSI hovered above 70, signaling intense upward momentum.

What you should know:

STRK continued its breakout trend after lifting sharply from mid-November levels, with the latest candle closing near $0.23 on strong buyer interest. The move carried price well above all layers of the MA ribbon, which widened upward as short-term averages pulled further away from the longer-term trend. Volume remained consistently elevated throughout the climb, and the most recent session recorded another sizable green bar, suggesting that traders remained active. The RSI climbed above 70, reflecting strong momentum but also indicating that the token entered overbought territory. Beyond the chart, sentiment benefited from ongoing ecosystem developments such as Bitcoin staking growth through BTCFi, rising interest in Starknet’s prover upgrade, and supply tightening driven by high staking participation. The main levels to monitor from here are the $0.20 support zone and the $0.24 resistance area.

MYX Finance (MYX)

Key points:

  • MYX climbed to $3.16 after extending its slow recovery from the early November lows.

  • The price hovered slightly above its 9-day SMA while the DMI showed +DI leading, though ADX stayed below both lines, indicating a weak trend backdrop.

What you should know:

MYX posted another green session as it continued to stabilize following a prolonged downtrend. The latest candle closed near $3.16 and remained only a little above the 9-day SMA, suggesting that short-term momentum improved but did not yet form a strong directional push. Volume picked up compared to earlier in the month, reflecting better participation from traders now that the price appears to have found a base around the $2.80 region. The DMI lines showed +DI above –DI, signaling that buyers maintained an advantage. However, the ADX stayed below both directional lines, indicating that trend strength still needed to develop. On the catalyst side, interest grew around MYX’s recent infrastructure upgrades, including its Chainlink integration, which continued to draw attention to the project’s data reliability improvements. For now, the $3.00 support zone and the $3.40 to $3.50 region remain the key levels to monitor.

Injective (INJ)

Key points:

  • INJ traded around $6.85 after posting a mild 24h uptick, showing early signs of stabilizing after recent weakness.

  • The latest EWO bar turned slightly less negative, hinting at easing bearish momentum even as the trend structure remained mixed.

What you should know:

INJ spent the past session attempting to recover from its recent lower swing, with the price forming a small bounce off the latest higher low region. The Higher High Lower Low indicator highlighted a broader sequence of lower highs that shaped the downtrend, though the current candle showed buyers stepping in near short-term support. Volume stayed moderate compared to the heavy spike seen during the early November sell-off, which suggested that selling pressure had softened. On the EWO, the histogram remained in the red, but the newest bar printed with reduced downside intensity, showing that bearish momentum began losing steam. From a catalyst standpoint, market attention lingered on Injective’s EVM mainnet upgrade, which continued to attract developer flows and supported broader sentiment around the ecosystem. For now, traders will watch for a sustained hold above the recent higher low zone, while a move back toward the $7.20 area would be the next level to monitor.

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