Failed flooring retailer buys $100M in Trump crypto tokens

In June 2025, Aqua 1, a British Virgin Islands entity with no public history, announced it would buy $100 million in governance tokens from World Liberty Financial, the Trump family cryptocurrency venture, making it one of the venture's largest buyers. Reuters later identified the man behind Aqua 1 as Guren "Bobby" Zhou. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence determined that a wallet controlled by Web3Port, a crypto venture fund Zhou ran from the United Arab Emirates, purchased $20 million of the tokens in January 2025, and that a wallet it linked to Aqua 1 purchased $80 million in June; a Web3Port entity had been renamed Aqua 1 GP Limited in the British Virgin Islands two weeks before the announcement. Under World Liberty's published proceeds structure, as much as $75 million of the money was distributed to a company controlled by Trump and his three sons. The money also benefited the family of Steve Witkoff, the administration's special peace envoy and the father of World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff, who hosted Zhou in a luxury suite at the World Cup final in New Jersey on July 19, 2026. Two years before the purchase, Zhou was a hardwood-flooring retailer in Britain whose companies had gone into administration and whose crypto start-up, Caduceus, collapsed after burning through $7.6 million; a court record filed in November 2025 names him as one of six people alleged to have taken part in a money-laundering effort in England beginning in 2019. He has not been charged, and is the only one of the six who has not been; British officials said in late July 2026 that the investigation remained active. Patrick Prinz, chief operating officer of the Swiss digital-asset investigations firm Recoveris, said the combination of Zhou's business failures, his sudden access to wealth, the size of the transaction and the investigation should have triggered requirements that World Liberty document the source of the funds, and noted that international anti-money-laundering rules classify the Trump family as "politically exposed persons" warranting heightened scrutiny. World Liberty spokesman David Wachsman said the company had followed all applicable laws and regulations and that its compliance program "meets or exceeds industry standards," but declined to say whether the company knew the source of the funds; he disputed the Times's characterization of Zhou without citing specifics. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Trump had no conflicts of interest. Zhou did not respond to messages. He subsequently used the World Liberty stake as a marketing point, describing Aqua 1 as having "demonstrable credibility" as the venture's largest investor and presenting a slide at a Dubai crypto conference that showed Trump and his three sons under the words "The Power behind USD1."