Aqua 1 buys $100 million WLFI tokens

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A $100 million purchase of WLFI tokens from World Liberty Financial, the crypto project backed by the Trump family, has drawn scrutiny over the identity and funding history of Aqua 1 Foundation, the Abu Dhabi-based entity presented as the buyer. The purchase, announced in 2025, was the largest publicly reported single WLFI acquisition and exceeded the $75 million purchase attributed to crypto entrepreneur Sun Yuchen.

Blockchain records and corporate documents reviewed in reporting connect Aqua 1’s transaction to Zhou Gurun, a Chinese national born in Shanghai in 1984 who has a record of failed business ventures, enforcement cases in China, and a past money-laundering investigation in the United Kingdom. The trail also links Aqua 1 to Web3Port, a Web3 advisory and investment platform that appears to have changed its corporate branding shortly after its WLFI-related activity emerged.

World Liberty Financial has marketed WLFI as a governance token for its decentralized-finance platform. Under the project’s published arrangements, entities connected to Donald Trump are entitled to 75% of net revenue from token sales, making the identity and source of funds behind major buyers a politically sensitive issue as well as a cryptocurrency-market concern.

On-chain purchases point to Web3Port and Aqua 1

Arkham Intelligence identified two wallets associated with the WLFI buying activity. A wallet labeled Web3Port acquired roughly $20 million worth of WLFI in January 2025, while a separate wallet labeled “aqua1” purchased approximately $80 million in June 2025.

Together, the transactions match Aqua 1’s stated $100 million commitment. The structure complicates the impression of a single newly established Abu Dhabi fund making one isolated purchase, since a substantial portion of the buying activity was linked on-chain to Web3Port before Aqua 1 became the public-facing name.

The January transaction took place shortly after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Roughly a month later, a British Virgin Islands company connected to Web3Port began a renaming process that replaced “Web3Port” with “Aqua 1,” according to corporate records cited in the investigation.

Aqua 1 GP Limited later emerged as the vehicle associated with the WLFI transaction. Documents reviewed by reporters described a series of renaming moves involving Web3Port-related entities during a period when market-making activity involving the network was under scrutiny. The changes did not by themselves establish wrongdoing, but they left a less transparent trail for identifying the business operating behind Aqua 1 and the source of its capital.

Zhou Gurun’s legal and business record

Zhou has been identified as the controlling individual behind Aqua 1 and the principal source of the funds used for the WLFI purchase. China’s enforcement information database lists him as a “dishonest person subject to enforcement,” a designation used for individuals who have failed to comply with court judgments.

The database links Zhou to six enforcement cases involving unpaid amounts totaling roughly 25 million yuan, or about $3.5 million at recent exchange rates. Such listings do not amount to a criminal conviction, but they place him among people whom Chinese courts have identified as failing to satisfy enforcement obligations.

A charging document from the UK Crown Prosecution Service also connects Zhou to a money-laundering case in Britain. British police arrested Zhou in 2021 on suspicion of money laundering, according to reporting published by The New York Times in early August 2026. The court case involving his accused co-defendants is scheduled for trial in 2028.

Zhou’s earlier business career was rooted in the flooring industry. Reporting on his background described him as having studied in the United Kingdom before helping expand a family wood-flooring business into Europe. He later founded Flooring Republic, a retail chain that operated more than 20 stores before entering liquidation in 2018.

From Caduceus to the Web3Port network

After Flooring Republic’s collapse, Zhou moved into digital assets and founded Caduceus Protocol, a project promoted as modular infrastructure for metaverse and artificial-intelligence applications. Caduceus announced a $4 million Series A financing round in March 2022 and said the round included Susquehanna International Group, BlockFills, Qredo and TokenInsight.

The project also made claims about institutional support that were later disputed. In 2022, Caduceus publicly said it had backing from China Merchants Securities (UK) and Bin Zayed Group. Both organizations subsequently said the statements were unauthorized and false.

Caduceus’s CAD token began trading on secondary markets in July 2024, according to CoinMarketCap data. The token reached roughly $0.60 that month before declining to about $0.00032, leaving it with a market capitalization near $32,000 and daily trading volume of roughly $1,720 at the time of the cited data. The collapse illustrates the weak commercial legacy of one of Zhou’s earlier crypto ventures, even as entities connected to him later appeared in one of the sector’s most politically charged token sales.

Zhou relocated from London to Abu Dhabi around the summer of 2024. After that move, affiliated companies began appearing more frequently in transaction trails tied to WLFI, overlapping with activity attributed to Web3Port.

Web3Port’s predecessor, ICPort, was registered in the British Virgin Islands and portrayed itself as a Web3 accelerator and investment platform. It was reported to have raised around $1 million in seed funding in 2022, listing SNZ Holding, HashKey Capital, FBG Capital and KuCoin Ventures among its backers. Its advertised services included project promotion, token-economics design, fundraising introductions, exchange-listing negotiations and market-maker referrals.

UAE registration searches found no Aqua 1 record

Aqua 1 said in a July 2025 statement that it had no equity, financial or operational relationship with unrelated entities. Yet searches reported with Abu Dhabi Global Market, Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority and the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority returned no registration results for Aqua 1 or related individuals.

The fund’s online infrastructure also pointed back toward Web3Port. Aqua 1’s website shared an Amazon Web Services server with web3port.foundation and web3port.us, according to the reported technical review. Shared hosting alone is common across businesses and does not prove common ownership, though it adds to the evidence tying the two brands together.

World Liberty Financial’s development team has said its compliance procedures meet or exceed prevailing financial standards. Representatives did not say whether the project verified the precise origin of the funds before accepting Aqua 1’s $100 million token purchase.

White House press secretary Kelley denied ethical violations or conflicts of interest amid scrutiny in August 2026. The public questions have focused on whether an entity with unclear regulatory registration, connected to a purchaser with a complicated legal record, was able to send $100 million into a Trump-linked token project without greater transparency over its ownership and funding.

A public photograph from July 2026 showed Zhou alongside World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff in a private suite at the World Cup final in New Jersey, about a year after Aqua 1’s purchase was announced. The image added a visible personal connection to a relationship previously traced mainly through token wallets, offshore company records and corporate websites.