A man with a checkered business history and a past money-laundering investigation in Britain has been identified as the force behind one of the largest single investments ever made into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture.
As per a New York Times report, Guren “Bobby” Zhou, a onetime hardwood flooring seller in the UK whose earlier ventures largely failed, was the person who directed roughly $100 million into World Liberty Financial (WLFI) tokens through an entity called Aqua 1. This sum ranks among the biggest single purchases the Trump-linked crypto firm has ever recorded, and it left observers puzzling over exactly how Zhou came to command that kind of capital.
Zhou’s name is not new to financial investigators. A 2024 court filing in the United Kingdom lists him as one of six individuals suspected of involvement in a money-laundering operation that authorities say began in 2019. Before the Aqua 1 purchase came to light, Zhou had also been connected to the implosion of a crypto business worth millions of dollars, and he was arrested in the UK back in 2021 in connection with the laundering probe.
Given that background, the Times described the source of his sudden World Liberty investment as a genuine mystery. There was no clear explanation for how someone with a string of business failures and an open fraud-related investigation ended up bankrolling a purchase of this scale.
Meanwhile, Blockchain researchers at Arkham Intelligence pieced together the transaction trail. They found that a wallet connected to Web3Port, an earlier company Zhou had been involved with, purchased $20 million worth of WLFI tokens back in January 2025.
Months later, in June 2025, a separate wallet tied to Aqua 1, which markets itself as a Web3-focused investment fund headquartered in the UAE, bought an additional $80 million in tokens, bringing the combined total to around $100 million. Because of how World Liberty Financial’s ownership is structured, a large chunk of that money, as much as $75 million, flowed to a company controlled by President Trump and his three sons.
Before Zhou’s name surfaced, speculation had centered on a different figure: Dave Lee. Aqua 1’s foundation confirmed in July 2025 that Lee had taken on the role of co-founder and chief executive back in April of that year. However, the foundation never clarified whether Lee was personally responsible for directing the funds used in the WLFI token purchase, leaving his exact role in the transaction unresolved even as Zhou’s involvement came into focus.
Aqua 1’s stake, while striking given Zhou’s background, is not the largest World Liberty has attracted. Tron founder Justin Sun put an initial $45 million into the company’s tokens, and an Abu Dhabi-based entity backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan is reported to hold a stake worth roughly $500 million, dwarfing Aqua 1’s contribution.
Zhou’s identification as the person behind Aqua 1’s investment answers one question but raises several more including how he secured the funds despite his financial troubles, what his relationship with Dave Lee actually is, and whether regulators in the UK or elsewhere will revisit his case now that his name is publicly tied to a nine-figure crypto transaction connected to a sitting U.S. president’s family business.
