WLFI's Biggest Backer Turns Out to Be a "Repeated Defaulter"?
- Core Insight: Zhou Guren (born in Shanghai in 1984), the Chinese de facto controller behind UAE investment firm Aqua 1 Foundation, became the largest buyer of the Trump family's WLFI tokens with a $100 million purchase. However, his history of being listed as a judgment defaulter, an ongoing UK money laundering investigation, and his covert ties to the controversial crypto entity Web3Port have raised widespread questions about the compliance of these funds.
- Key Elements:
- Zhou Guren invested $100 million in WLFI through Aqua 1, surpassing Sun Yuchen's $75 million to become the project's largest single investor.
- Zhou Guren is listed as a judgment defaulter in China, involved in six cases with total outstanding debts of approximately 25 million yuan, and also faces prosecution for money laundering by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service.
- He previously founded flooring retail chain Flooring Republic, which was wound up in 2018; he later established Caduceus Protocol, which in 2022 falsely claimed support from China Merchants Securities (UK) and Bin Zayed Group, both of which denied any affiliation.
- On-chain analysis shows that in January 2025, Web3Port purchased $20 million worth of WLFI, and the associated company was subsequently renamed Aqua 1, suggesting a substantive ongoing relationship between the two.
- Multiple regulators, including Abu Dhabi Global Market, could not find any registration information for Aqua 1, and its official website shares the same AWS server as Web3Port.
- The CAD token issued by his Caduceus project has plummeted 99.9% in value, with a market cap of only approximately $32,000, nearly reaching zero.
- A Swiss investigation firm noted that the combination of Zhou Guren's history of business failures, sudden wealth, and money laundering investigation should trigger anti-money laundering scrutiny, yet WLFI has declined to clarify whether it was aware of the source of funds.
Original author: Nicky, Foresight News
According to Caixin's report on August 26, Aqua 1 Foundation, an investment institution from the UAE, previously spent $100 million to purchase WLFI tokens issued by Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial, surpassing Justin Sun's cumulative investment of $75 million and becoming the project's largest buyer.
For quite some time, the identity of Aqua 1's actual controller remained a mystery, but the figure behind it has gradually surfaced recently: a Chinese national born in Shanghai in 1984, whose real name is Zhou Guren, is the biggest backer behind this transaction.
Caixin's report also noted that Zhou Guren is listed as a judgment debtor subject to enforcement on China's judicial enforcement information disclosure platform, involving six cases with outstanding debts totaling approximately 25 million RMB. Additionally, a recent indictment provided by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service shows he is also implicated in a money laundering case in the UK. Furthermore, according to information from Caixin and The New York Times, he appears to be connected to Web3Port, a controversial crypto institution in the industry.
Zhou Guren met with Welsh officials, including Economy Minister Ken Skates, in Shanghai in 2017. Source: Welsh Government.
According to an investigative report by The New York Times published on August 9, Zhou Guren studied in the UK in his early years and built his initial fortune by expanding his family's wooden flooring business to Europe. He founded Flooring Republic, a flooring retail chain with over 20 stores, which ended in liquidation in 2018. He subsequently moved into the cryptocurrency space, founding the Caduceus Protocol project, and in 2022 publicly claimed support from China Merchants Securities (UK) and Bin Zayed Group — both institutions later clarified that such statements were unauthorized and false. Around the summer of 2024, Zhou relocated from London to Abu Dhabi, and his affiliated entities began to appear frequently in WLFI transaction chains.
Regarding the financial flows between Zhou Guren and WLFI, according to The New York Times' investigation, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence tracked two wallet addresses: one wallet controlled by Web3Port purchased $20 million in WLFI in January 2025, while another wallet labeled "aqua1" purchased $80 million in June of the same year. This on-chain trail aligns with the timeline mentioned in Caixin's report: just one week after Trump returned to the White House on January 27, 2025, Web3Port immediately purchased its first batch of WLFI worth $20 million; about a month later, a British Virgin Islands company linked to Web3Port initiated a name change, replacing "Web3Port" with "Aqua 1."
Aqua 1 previously issued a statement in July 2025, denying any equity, financial, or operational affiliation with any unrelated entities.
According to prior disclosures by crypto blogger "CLabs founder Da Piao Liang," Reuters reporters had verified Aqua 1's registration information with Abu Dhabi Global Market, the Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai's crypto regulator VARA, and the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority — all responded that no such institution or relevant personnel could be found. The blogger also claimed that Aqua 1's official website shares the same AWS server as web3port.foundation and web3port.us.
Public records show that Web3Port, formerly known as ICPort, is registered in the British Virgin Islands and positions itself as a Web3 accelerator and investment platform. It completed a seed round of approximately $1 million around 2022, with investors including SNZ Holding, HashKey Capital, FBG Capital, KuCoin Ventures, and others. Its business scope covers project packaging, tokenomics design, fundraising facilitation, exchange listing negotiations, and "recommended market makers."
According to materials obtained by The New York Times, Web3Port-affiliated entities underwent name changes around the time of the market-making investigation, with the new entity Aqua 1 GP Limited subsequently becoming the primary vehicle for the WLFI investment. This temporal overlap has made it difficult to dispel external skepticism over whether a substantive continuity exists between Web3Port and Aqua 1.
Prior to this, Zhou Guren's other public track record in the crypto space was Caduceus, a modular protocol positioned as metaverse and AI infrastructure. In March 2022, Caduceus announced the completion of a $4 million Series A funding round, backed by institutions including Susquehanna International Group, BlockFills, Qredo, and TokenInsight.
According to CoinMarketCap data, its official CAD token began trading on secondary markets in July 2024, briefly reaching approximately $0.6 that month. The price has since continued to decline and now stands at $0.00032, with a market capitalization of only approximately $32,000 and a 24-hour trading volume of around $1,720, with only minimal trading on Gate exchange.
The relationship between Caduceus's failure and Web3Port forms two intertwining threads in Zhou Guren's crypto track record. Together, they point to one unresolved core question: how could a person with tens of millions of RMB in outstanding debts in China and an ongoing money laundering investigation in the UK become the largest single investor in WLFI.
For WLFI, the compliance of these funds has always been a focal point of external scrutiny. According to The New York Times, citing Patrick Prinz, Chief Operating Officer of Swiss digital asset crime investigation firm Recoveris, Zhou Guren's history of business failures, the sudden appearance of substantial wealth, the transaction scale, and the ongoing money laundering investigation — taken together — should trigger source-of-funds scrutiny requirements under anti-money laundering regulations. A WLFI spokesperson responded that the company complies with all applicable laws and regulations, but declined to say whether it was aware of the specific source of these funds.
Private interactions between Zhou Guren and the WLFI team have also left public traces. According to The New York Times, in July 2026, Zhou was photographed alongside World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff in a private box at the World Cup final in New Jersey, USA — roughly one year after Aqua 1 announced its $100 million investment.
