Those who collaborate with Russia will not receive Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency

The HTX cryptocurrency exchange has suspended trading on several trading pairs linked to the World Liberty Financial project—a crypto platform associated with Donald Trump. The reason was the WLFI team’s decision to activate a locking mechanism in the native token’s smart contract on addresses linked to HTX, making any movement of WLFI tokens on the blockchain impossible. As explained by World Liberty Financial, the freeze was prompted by sanctions imposed against the exchange.

In response, HTX suspended trading in the WLFI/USDT, USD1/USDT, BTC/USD1, and ETH/USD1 pairs. Additionally, the exchange blocked deposits and withdrawals of the USD1 stablecoin and automatically converted all customer USD1 balances into USDT at a 1:1 ratio. WLFI native tokens currently remain in on-chain addresses—the exchange promises to provide access to them once World Liberty Financial lifts the restrictions.

HTX has officially contacted WLFI demanding that the assets be unfrozen and that a legal justification for the decision be provided. According to exchange representatives, the frozen funds belong to users who purchased the tokens legally; however, World Liberty Financial has yet to provide any explanation regarding the legal basis or the freezing procedure.

USD1 is a dollar-pegged stablecoin traded on Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. HTX was one of the first platforms to support World Liberty Financial—USD1 was listed on the platform as early as May 6 of last year.

On May 26, the United Kingdom imposed sanctions against Huobi Global—HTX's Panama-registered parent company. British authorities suspect the exchange of helping Russia circumvent international sanctions: over $ 1.5 billion allegedly passed through the platform. Shortly thereafter, rival exchange Bybit announced the introduction of additional verification checks for HTX customers.