What links the Trump crypto empire and Burkina Faso’s stablecoin plans?

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A few weeks ago, we wrote about a former flooring salesman linked to an obscure Emirati investment group called Aqua1 Foundation. In June, Aqua1 bought $100mn-worth of the World Liberty Financial governance token (WLFI), a cryptocurrency backed by the Trump and Witkoff families.

Whether potential profit or a chance to curry favour with a president who has a penchant for big-round-numbers inspired Aqua1’s WLFI investment remains an open question. The token’s value has fallen about 25 per cent since October 10, when WLF’s “co-founder emeritus” Donald Trump, also US president, threatened to slap huge extra tariffs on China.

The announcement triggered a wave of crypto liquidations and a nasty sell-off for the broader digital assets market. It also got us wondering if Aqua1 had racked up losses elsewhere.

There’s little online trace of the “Web3 native” group beyond its austere website, and emails requesting an interview with Aqua1’s founding partner Dave Lee or apparent representative (and one-time UK hardwood flooring kingpin) Guren “Bobby” Zhou went unanswered.

Searching by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee late last month also turned up next to nothing (though it doesn’t look like they included “Aqua1” as well as “Aqua 1” in their hunt).

Committee staff reviewed Emirati public records to determine the legal status of Aqua 1 Foundation and ultimately found no documents confirming Aqua 1’s corporate existence.

Staff conducted searches in both English and Arabic for “Aqua 1,” “Aqua 1 Foundation,” and “Aqua Labs Investment LLC” with the Unified Commercial Registration System for the Ministry of Economy as well as major financial regulators including the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA), the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), and Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC.)    

As far as we can tell, Aqua1 has just one other deal to its name: in September, it made a $20mn “strategic investment” in Above Food Ingredients — a Regina, Saskatchewan-based food tech company whose main product appears to be an enticing boil-in-bag quinoa. “This partnership is not merely synergistic — it’s catalytic,” Aqua1’s Lee poeticised in a press release at the time.

AFI has not yet responded to our questions about the unlikely tie-up, so what follows is a shortish spin through its increasingly bizarre press releases and securities filings over the past 18 months.

The Canadian company went public in July 2024 through a merger with a Spac called Bite Acquisition. By the end of the year, it had fallen to a net loss of $38.2mn on adjusted revenue of $273.1mn.

With its share price languishing at the start of 2025, AFI did what any sensible Nasdaq-listed, sub-dollar stock would: embrace crypto.

In February, AFI announced a “strategic pivot” away from texturised proteins and precision flour as it signed a letter of intent to buy Dubai-based Palm Global Technologies, a company that hopes to leverage “blockchain technology and AI” to expand financial inclusion across Africa, Latin America and south-east Asia. In charge at Palm is Peter Knez, former chief investment officer of fixed income at BlackRock and BGI. Palm Global did not respond to a request for comment.

Three months later, AFI launched Palm Promax Investments (PPI) — “a strategic joint venture” between Palm Global and Abu Dhabi conglomerate Promax United LLC to develop a stablecoin behemoth that would make even Tether blush.

Cue more big, round numbers (our emphasis):

[PPI’s] vision is built upon two primary objectives, the creation of the world’s leading digital fixed-income platform and the establishment of the world’s most globally recognized stablecoin digital asset. Both initiatives are anchored by the tokenization of over $1.5 trillion in AA and AAA-rated Real-World Assets and backed by sovereign partnerships in more than fifteen nations. 

Underpinned by Promax UAE’s unparalleled access to Real-World Assets and powered by Palm Global’s highly scalable AI driven DeFi ecosystem, Palm Promax has launched with an initial injection of approximately $350 billion in U.S. gold-based assets onto the joint venture’s balance sheet.

Under the terms of its proposed merger with Palm Global, AFI said in July that it would exchange more than a billion of its shares for a 30 per cent stake in PPI. This includes Palm Global’s stake in PPI’s claimed $350bn (!!!) pile of gold-based things. (All of the yellow metal in Fort Knox is worth about $620bn at current prices.)

Palm Global’s Knez and Dubai royal Sheikh Mohammed Bin Maktoum Bin Juma Al Maktoum have meanwhile been lined up to join AFI’s board, and its Big Four auditor EY has been swapped for US-based CBIZ because of the latter’s “specialised expertise in digital asset tokenisation and stablecoin infrastructure”.

In late October, not long after Aqua1’s investment, AFI “announced and celebrated” another coup — the president’s office of Burkina Faso having apparently agreed to a joint venture “involving the adoption [of] PPI’s gold and mineral backed stablecoin” as the country’s digital currency of choice.

Per the accompanying press release (our emphasis):

In a historic move, the Government of Burkina Faso will pledge up to $8 trillion in gold and mineral-based assets — including vast in-ground reserves that have long remained unrecognized by global financial systems.

Although its merger with Palm Global isn’t yet complete, AFI said in late November that its “restructuring” over the past year had already “eliminated all corporate debt” and positioned it to deliver “more than $30mn in profit” for the fiscal year ending January 2026. AFI raised that figure to $40mn earlier this month.

There was one tiny snag, however. An audit the company had said would land by December 12 probably won’t be ready for at least another few weeks:

While the audit has advanced positively, the timetable has been impacted over the past several weeks by unavoidable illness-related resourcing challenges faced by the team.

Taking into account the upcoming holiday season, Above Food now anticipates that the audit will be completed shortly after the new year.

Investors were unsympathetic and AFI’s stock ended that day down more than 40 per cent.

AFI was trading at around $1.70 at pixel time on Tuesday. Aqua1’s $20mn convertible note investment was priced at a conversion rate of $2.50 per share. Its commitment to AFI’s vision “to create a healthier world — one seed, one field, and one bite at a time” while also tokenising Burkina Faso’s gold reserves presumably remains undimmed.

Further reading:
— What links the Trump crypto empire and a Lancashire-based flooring company? (FTAV)