Aqua 1 Foundation, an investment entity described by Caixin as based in the United Arab Emirates, previously spent $100 million on WLFI tokens issued by Trump family crypto project World Liberty Financial. That made Aqua 1 the largest buyer of the token, ahead of Justin Sun’s cumulative $75 million commitment, according to Caixin’s Aug. 26 report.
For a long stretch, the identity of the person behind Aqua 1 was unclear. Recent reporting has begun to fill in that gap. Caixin said the key financier behind the transaction was Zhou Guren, a Chinese national born in Shanghai in 1984.
Caixin and The New York Times traced the funding trail to Zhou Guren
Caixin reported that Zhou is listed on China’s public enforcement information system as a dishonest judgment debtor. The report said he is tied to six cases with roughly 25 million yuan in unpaid debt. It also said a recent indictment provided by the UK Crown Prosecution Service linked him to a money laundering case in the United Kingdom.
Caixin added that information from multiple sources, including The New York Times, tied Zhou to Web3Port, a crypto firm that has drawn controversy in the industry.
The article also said Zhou met Welsh officials in Shanghai in 2017, including Economy Minister Ken Skates. The image cited in the source was credited to the Welsh government.
From a flooring business in Britain to the Caduceus crypto project
According to an investigative report published by The New York Times on Aug. 9, Zhou studied in the UK in his earlier years and first built his business by expanding his family’s wood flooring trade into Europe. He later founded Flooring Republic, a flooring chain that at one point had more than 20 stores. The business ended in liquidation in 2018.
He later moved into crypto and founded Caduceus Protocol. The report said the project claimed in 2022 that it had support from China Merchants Securities (UK) and Bin Zayed Group. Both institutions later said those statements were unauthorized and false.
Around the summer of 2024, Zhou moved from London to Abu Dhabi. After that, entities linked to him began showing up repeatedly in the WLFI transaction chain.
Wallet activity and a corporate rename linked Web3Port and Aqua 1
The New York Times, citing blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, said two wallet addresses were traced in connection with the flow of funds between Zhou and WLFI. One wallet controlled by Web3Port bought $20 million worth of WLFI in January 2025. Another wallet labeled “aqua1” bought $80 million worth in June that year.
That on-chain trail matched the timeline described by Caixin. On Jan. 27, 2025, just one week after Trump returned to the White House, Web3Port bought the first $20 million batch of WLFI, the report said. About a month later, a British Virgin Islands company linked to Web3Port began a renaming process, replacing “Web3Port” with “Aqua 1.”
Aqua 1 said in a statement released in July 2025 that it had no equity, financial, or operational ties with any unrelated entities.
Crypto blogger “CLabs 创始人大漂亮” had earlier said Reuters reporters checked Aqua 1’s registration records with Abu Dhabi Global Market, Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai’s crypto regulator VARA, and the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority. The responses, according to the blogger, were that no record could be found for the entity or related individuals. The blogger also said Aqua 1’s website used the same AWS server as web3port.foundation and web3port.us.
Web3Port’s earlier identity, funding, and business lines
Public records described Web3Port as formerly known as ICPort and registered in the British Virgin Islands. It presented itself as a Web3 accelerator and investment platform. Around 2022, it completed a seed round of about $1 million, with investors including SNZ Holding, HashKey Capital, FBG Capital, and KuCoin Ventures.
Its business covered project packaging, tokenomics design, fundraising coordination, exchange listing negotiations, and “recommended market makers.”
Materials obtained by The New York Times said entities linked to Web3Port changed names around the time of a market-making investigation. The renamed Aqua 1 GP Limited later became the investing vehicle for WLFI. That overlap in timing has kept alive questions over whether Aqua 1 was, in substance, a continuation of Web3Port.
Caduceus raised funding, but its token later collapsed
Caduceus was presented as a modular protocol focused on metaverse and AI infrastructure. In March 2022, the project announced a $4 million Series A round backed by Susquehanna International Group, BlockFills, Qredo, TokenInsight, and others.
CoinMarketCap data showed that its CAD token began secondary-market trading in July 2024 and reached about $0.6 that month. The token then kept falling. It was recently quoted at $0.00032, with a market capitalization of about $32,000 and 24-hour volume of about $1,720, with only light trading on Gate.
Source-of-funds questions around WLFI remain unresolved
The report said the failure of Caduceus and the ties to Web3Port form two intersecting threads in Zhou’s crypto track record. Together they point to a central unresolved question: how a person with tens of millions of yuan in unpaid debt in China and an ongoing money laundering case in the UK became WLFI’s largest single investor.
For WLFI, the compliance status of the money remains a focus. The New York Times cited Patrick Prinz, chief operating officer at Swiss digital asset crime investigation firm Recoveris, as saying that Zhou’s record of business failure, the sudden appearance of significant wealth, the size of the transactions, and the ongoing money laundering case should together trigger source-of-funds checks under anti-money laundering rules.
A WLFI spokesperson said the company complies with all applicable laws and regulations, but declined to say whether it knew the specific source of the funds.
Zhou was later seen with a World Liberty co-founder
The New York Times also reported that in July 2026, Zhou was photographed with World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff in a private suite at the World Cup final in New Jersey. That appearance came about a year after Aqua 1 announced its $100 million investment.