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Exclusive: Eric Trump Calls Maldives Hotel First of Many Real Estate Tokenization Projects

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Exclusive: Eric Trump Calls Maldives Hotel First of Many Real Estate Tokenization Projects

The new project highlights World Liberty Financial’s broader push to bring traditional assets on-chain.

World Liberty Financial’s plan to tokenize loan revenue interests tied to the Trump International Hotel & Resort in the Maldives is just the start of a larger plan, World Liberty Financial co-founder Eric Trump said in an exclusive interview with The Defiant.

The project, announced Wednesday, Feb. 18, is being developed with real estate firm DarGlobal and Securitize, a platform known for tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs), including funds like BlackRock’s BUIDL.

Trump told Camila Russo, founder of The Defiant, that tokenization will change real estate finance by making deals simpler and allowing more people to invest who couldn’t before.

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“Do we have more plans for this? Yes, certainly, World Liberty has plans to be in the tokenization space of many different asset types, and they’re sprinting toward that,” Trump said. “I believe [DarGlobal CEO Ziad El Chaar] and I will do many more projects, tokenize many more projects, and I think history will look back and say, you know, these were the guys that popped the cork of the champagne bottle.”

The first token sale is designed to give accredited investors a fixed return, a share of income from loans tied to the resort, and the potential for profits upon any future sale. The tokens are expected to be issued on public blockchains and could later be used as collateral on World Liberty Financial’s platform, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant.

“We believe that scalable on-chain real estate products issued with compliance, governance, and market structure in mind will be globally sought after. That’s exactly what this partnership with WLFI is designed to deliver,” said Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize.

The deal highlights a broader trend in crypto of more institutions and firms focusing on tokenization – one of the fastest-growing sectors in the space. As of Thursday, Feb. 19, the distributed asset value of tokenized RWAs has climbed to $24.8 billion, up 11% in the past month, while the number of holders rose more than 30% in the same time frame, according to RWAxyz.

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“Everything’s gonna be tokenized,” Trump emphasized. “Commodities are gonna be tokenized, Hollywood can be tokenized, artists are gonna be tokenized, brands, I mean, you can tokenize just about anything.”

The Maldives resort is a flagship hospitality development scheduled to open in 2030. It is expected to include 100 beach and overwater villas, according to the press release.

World Liberty Financial’s native token WLFI is currently trading at around $0.12, down 3.8% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The move follows Wednesday’s rally of 30%, which occurred just ahead of the World Liberty Financial forum held at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Meanwhile, World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin recently surpassed $5.1 billion in circulation, up from roughly $3 billion just weeks ago. It’s now the fifth-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, according to DeFiLlama.

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Crypto World

Bitcoin $60K Retest Odds Rise As Bearish Options, ETF Outflows Show Fear

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Bitcoin $60K Retest Odds Rise As Bearish Options, ETF Outflows Show Fear

Key takeaways:

  • Professional traders are paying a 13% premium for downside protection as Bitcoin struggles to maintain support above $66,000.

  • While stocks and gold remain strong, $910 million in Bitcoin ETF outflows suggest that institutional investor caution is rising.

Bitcoin (BTC) price entered a downward spiral after rejecting near $71,000 on Sunday. Despite successfully defending the $66,000 level throughout the week, options markets reflect growing fear as professional traders avoid downside price exposure. 

Even with relative strength in the stock market and gold prices, traders seem to be effectively betting on a $60,000 retest rather than overreacting to Bitcoin price dips.

BTC two-month options delta skew (put-call) at Deribit. Source: laevitas.ch

Bitcoin put (sell) options traded at a 13% premium relative to call (buy) instruments on Thursday. Under neutral conditions, the delta skew metric typically ranges between -6% and +6%, indicating balanced demand for upside and downside strategies. The fact that these levels have been sustained over the past four weeks shows that professional sentiment is leaning heavily toward caution.

Top BTC options strategies at Derbit past 48h, USD. Source: Laevitas.ch

This bearish bias is clear in the neutral-to-bearish positioning seen in Bitcoin options. According to Laevitas data, the bear diagonal spread, short straddle and short risk reversal were the most traded strategies on the Deribit exchange over the past 48 hours.

The first lowers the cost of the bearish bet because the short-term option loses value faster, while the second maximizes profit if Bitcoin price barely moves. The short risk reversal, on the other hand, generates profit from a downward move with little to no upfront cost, but it carries unlimited risk if the price spikes.

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Weak institutional demand for Bitcoin ETFs fuels discontent

To better gauge the risk appetite of traders, analysts often look at stablecoin demand in China. When investors rush to exit the cryptocurrency market, this indicator usually drops below parity.

USD stablecoin premium/discount relative to USD/CNY rate. Source: OKX

Under neutral conditions, stablecoins should trade at a 0.5% to 1% premium relative to the US dollar/Yuan exchange rate. This premium compensates for the high costs of traditional FX conversion, remittance fees and the regulatory friction caused by China’s capital controls. The current 0.2% discount suggests moderate outflows, though this is an improvement from the 1.4% discount seen on Monday.

Part of the current discontent among traders can be explained by the lackluster flows in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which serve as a proxy for institutional demand. 

Related: Bitcoin ETFs still sit on $53B in net inflows despite recent outflows–Bloomberg

US-listed Bitcoin ETFs daily net flows, USD. Source: Farside Investors

US-listed Bitcoin ETFs have seen $910 million in total outflows since Feb. 11, which likely caught bulls off balance, especially as Bitcoin traded 47% below its all-time high while gold prices hovered near $5,000, up 15% in just two months. Similarly, the S&P 500 index sat only 2% below its own all-time high, indicating that this risk-aversion is largely restricted to the cryptocurrency sector.

While Bitcoin options signal a fear of further downside, traders are likely staying extremely cautious until a clear rationale for the crash to $60,200 on Feb. 6 finally emerges.

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