Japan’s bond market convulsions are rattling global debt assumptions, with 
Bitwise warning the sell-off exposes structural cracks that could foreshadow 
mounting U.S. fiscal strain as borrowing costs climb worldwide. Bond Market 
Turmoil in Japan Sparks New Warnings on US Fiscal Stability, Bitwise Says 
Japanese government bond markets plunged into rare disorder as long-term 
yields spiked […]

Japanese Bonds Crashing — Bitwise Says the US Fiscal Path Is No Safer

A governance vote at World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a DeFi project marketed 
around the Trump brand, is drawing allegations of “slow” value extraction 
after a prominent trader claimed affiliated wallets pushed through a proposal 
while many public holders remained unable to access or vote with their tokens. 
DeFi^2 (@DeFiSquared), who describes himself as the #1 ranked trader on Bybit 
in 2023 and 2024, wrote on X that he was “bringing up an alarming governance 
vote by World Liberty Fi this month that appears to be the start of a slow 
extraction of value from WLFI holders by the team.” World Liberty Fi Hit With 
&#8216;Rigged Vote&#8217; Claims DeFiSquared wrote: “What you see above appears to be a 
rigged vote, where the majority of top voters are indicated to be team wallets 
or strategic partner wallets by Bubble Maps. This is in contrast to the real 
voters lower in the screenshot, who have all been locked from accessing their 
WLFI tokens since TGE, and unable to vote on an unlock until the team allows 
it.” Related Reading: Trump-Linked World Liberty Backs USD1 With Treasury- 
Fueled Expansion The proposal at the center of the thread is what he calls the 
“USD1 growth proposal.” He argues it reads as “fairly mundane” on its face, 
but says the governance sequencing is the tell: “why would the team go out of 
their way to force this vote through, instead of voting on the WLFI token 
unlock that the majority of holders are asking for?” His thesis hinges on WLFI 
economics. DeFiSquared claims WLFI holders “are not entitled to ANY protocol 
revenue at all,” and says the project’s “Gold Paper” specifies revenue 
routing: “75% of protocol revenue goes to the Trump family, and 25% goes to 
the Witkoff family.” In his framing, that creates a perverse incentive: “It’s 
actually as crazy as it sounds: the team is forcing a vote to sell WLFI tokens 
at the expense of locked holders, in order to fund protocol revenue that goes 
only to themselves.” Related Reading: Trump’s WLFI Moves To Contain Wallet 
Breach While Federal Inquiry Looms He also alleges the vote’s outcome was 
manufactured late in the process. “This vote was actually failing by the time 
it reached quorum with a majority of votes rejecting the proposal, until the 
team / partners forced the vote through,” he wrote, adding token allocation 
context: “the WLFI team is allocated 33.5% of all tokens and strategic 
partners another 5.85%, while the public sale was allocated only 20%.” Post- 
vote, he points to on-chain flows as corroboration, citing “fresh transfers 
such as this one of 500 million WLFI tokens to Jump Trading,” while “investor 
WLFI allocations remain forcibly locked.” DeFiSquared closes with a valuation 
and positioning call: “it’s difficult to see the intrinsic value behind a 17 
billion dollar token that has no real governance power, no revenue share, and 
new foundation sell pressure occurring for their own benefit.” He adds he has 
shorted WLFI “on and off since pre-market prices above $0.34,” and expects 
continued downside “due to dilution, intentional extraction,” and “other 
factors related to Trump’s final term in office.” At press time, WLFI traded 
at $0.1608. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Slow Rug? Trump-Associated World Liberty Fi Accused Of Value Extraction

The crypto market continues its downturn with Bitcoin (BTC) and most altcoins 
are in the red, and the valuation of all coins falling by 2% over the last 24 
hours.

Top 3 reasons for today’s crypto market crash (Jan. 20)

Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy just scooped up another 22,305 BTC, pushing its 
stash past the 700,000 mark. The company’s founder broke the news on Tuesday 
while equity markets were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, adding that 
Strategy shelled out an average of $95,284 per bitcoin for the latest haul. 
Saylor’s Bitcoin Bet Grows […]

Strategy Buys 22,305 Bitcoin as Blackrock Circles Its Credit Stack

Strategy acquired 22,305 BTC last week at about $95,284 per coin, lifting its 
holdings to 709,715 BTC.

Cryptocurrency price in BMD