Revealed: Trump's $100 Million Man

This is who likely sent $100 million to Trump's World Liberty Financial from a fictitious company called Aqua 1 Foundation.

Last week, I published an article in The Nation about Aqua 1 Foundation, an apparently fictitious company that last month announced a $100 million purchase of $WLFI tokens from World Liberty Financial, which is the Trump family’s main crypto vehicle. I wrote a follow-up post about the potentially bottomless depth of Trump’s crypto-enabled corruption, which has already allowed him to take in hundreds of millions — and perhaps much more — from a range of shady to outright criminal actors.

Today, I am revealing the identity of the person who I believe is “Dave Lee,” the one named person associated with Aqua 1 Foundation. Lee’s name was mentioned in an Aqua 1 Foundation press release published on Reuters, and he has an X account with a cartoon avatar from which he’s posted 11 times in total.

I believe it is in the public interest to know who is doing a potential $100 million crypto deal with a crypto firm from which the president of the United States receives 75 percent of all revenue from token sales. Aqua 1 Foundation also claims to be supporting USD1, Trump’s new dollar-pegged stablecoin, meaning that it may be an ongoing partner in the President’s crypto dealings.

As I wrote last week, it’s clear from public blockchain data that the actor posting as Aqua 1 Foundation sent at least $80 million in USDT tokens to World Liberty Financial. The potential remaining $20 million apparently hasn’t been accounted for. According to a legal filing earlier this year, Trump was seeking to sell a portion of his LLC through which he receives WLF revenues to an unnamed buyer. It’s not clear if the deal ever happened, but per new fine print on WLF’s website, Trump’s financial stake in WLF recently declined from 60 percent to 40 percent. Someone in power should investigate!

I have asked World Liberty Financial’s outside PR repeatedly about this deal, including an email yesterday in which I wrote that I had likely identified the person behind Aqua 1 Foundation. They have not answered any questions. I have tweeted at “Dave Lee” on X several times, including letting him know that I had identified him, and he has not replied. Yesterday, I emailed the person I believe is Dave Lee. I also sent him a message on LinkedIn. He then deactivated his LinkedIn account. In short, I’ve given Dave Lee, Aqua 1 Foundation, and World Liberty Financial every possible opportunity to comment or refute my claims. They haven’t, nor have they provided journalists or the public any useful information about what is going on here.

Although Dave Lee is essentially pseudonymous on X and hasn’t posted much, he and his partners left some revealing traces. First, there’s the matter of aqua1.foundation, the website for Aqua 1 Foundation (there’s also aqua0.foundation). The AWS server that hosts the Aqua 1 website also hosts other crypto-related domains, which you can check with this Python script. They include:

• www.aqua1.foundation

• www.aqua0.foundation

• www.qqqai.fund

• www.blockrock.win

• web3port.foundation

• web3port.us

These entities appear interrelated, and Dave Lee has posted on X identifying himself as part of Blockrock. Web3Port Foundation and Web3Port Labs appear to be a group of Hong Kong-based Chinese crypto traders and investors. They are part of a UAE-focused VC crypto alliance and are reportedly investors in Klickl, a UAE-based crypto banking platform. Web3Port also acts as a market maker and was involved in a murky incident in which a WLF-supported company called Movement handed a bunch of its tokens to a Web3Port-linked company that promptly sold them all and cratered the price.

People affiliated with Web3Port have appeared under their real names at public crypto events over the last year in Singapore, Dubai, and Hong Kong. These events have been filmed and documented in digital event invitations and posts on X and LinkedIn.

One of the people who has represented Web3Port at crypto events is named David Jia Hua Li. At times, he has gone by David Li. On September 18, 2024, Li appeared at an event in Singapore called The Last Gold Mine of Web3. He appears 25 seconds into this video that Klickl posted on X. This is David:

On December 12, 2024, David Li appeared at an invitation-only event in Dubai (which someone duly posted about on LinkedIn). He was listed on the invitation as “David,” with a dog avatar.

One of the panelists posted a video [archive] from the event, where “David” can be seen at the 0:47 mark.

On February 21, 2025, David Li appeared in Hong Kong at event called Digital Silk Road: China-UAE Digital Economy Forum & KLK Foundation Launch. In a LinkedIn post, he was referred to as David Li, Acceleration Partner, Web3Port Labs. Crucially, Li was tagged in this and at least one other LinkedIn post, allowing one to easily find his profile. That profile appeared under the name Peter Li, and it’s the one that was deactivated after I sent a direct message asking about Aqua 1 Foundation. In the second LinkedIn post, his tagged name is David Jia Hua Li, which links again to the Peter Li profile.

The Peter Li profile had very little information on it, but it did include mention of a management job at CNPC Beijing, June 2024 to Present. A ContactOut page [archive] — which apparently contains contact and business information scraped from social media sites — offers a fuller resume for David Li. The ContactOut page pulled information from a LinkedIn profile for a David Li — https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-li-3a9917171 — that has since been removed. Notably, the LinkedIn ID of 3a9917171 is the same as that of the Peter Li page.

The ContactOut page helps unlock the Dave Lee mystery, providing more information about David Jia Hua Li’s life and career. He’s identified here as a graduate of NYU. There are several email addresses, one of which I messaged.

Let’s go back to the X profile of Dave Lee, the only person publicly associated with Aqua 1 Foundation. His page lists his location as Sao Paolo, New York, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi. New York is where he went to business school; Hong Kong is where he’s worked in finance; and Abu Dhabi is where Web3Port has focused its efforts. As for Sao Paolo, it appears that David Jia Hua Li grew up in Brazil (he’s posted in Portuguese). An entry in a Brazilian immigration log mentions him “acquiring Chinese nationality.”

That comports with recent reporting in a Chinese-language crypto publication called Chaincatcher, which, citing anonymous sources, describes Aqua 1 Foundation’s Dave Lee as an NYU graduate and the scion of a “Chinese-Brazilian business family.”

By all available evidence, Aqua 1 Foundation’s Dave Lee is the David Li of Web3Port. I welcome any comment or clarification from the parties involved.

How did a 30-year-old Chinese-Brazilian finance professional working for a Chinese state energy company secure $100 million to buy crypto tokens from the President of the United States’ main crypto firm? And what do he and his colleagues expect in return?

Please message me on Signal at jacobsilverman.99 if you know more. I am very grateful for the tips that led me to this story, and I will be reporting further on it.