Latest news with #DaveLee
BBC News
15-07-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Ex-Chelsea player lucky to be alive after clot on heart
A former Premier League footballer said he is lucky to be alive after doctors spotted a clot on his heart during a routine scan. Dave Lee, who previously played for Bristol Rovers and Chelsea, said he did not experience any symptoms from the clot and without treatment, he could have died within said: "Another three weeks that would have risen and gone up to my brain and I wouldn't have been here anymore."The former defender has shared his story as part of BBC Radio Bristol's Wake Up Call health week, where presenter Joe Sims is asking people to talk about conditions that can go under the radar. In October 2024, he underwent a routine check-up after recovering from a stomach tumour five years Lee, who lives near Bath, said hours after the scan, doctors told him to pack a bag and prepare to stay in hospital for a week. He added: "What it was was a blood clot on my heart. It shocked me."The consultant was absolutely flabbergasted that I had no symptoms. I'm so lucky. If I hadn't had the tumour, I wouldn't have had the scan and I wouldn't have known."After undergoing triple bypass surgery, Mr Lee said he recovered within a month and started going for runs again."It was a really tough time but I'm glad I got through it," he Lee is raising awareness about the condition as part of Mr Sims' Wake Up Call healthcare week. The BBC presenter will host his show at Hartcliffe City Farm Friday morning, when he will speak to local people who can come along and agree to have their health checked.
Japan Times
14-07-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Trump's $100 million crypto mystery man
Of all the riddles wrapped in the digital wallets sending funds to U.S. President Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial crypto business, a little-known entity last month became the biggest. A venture calling itself Aqua 1 Foundation and saying it is based in the United Arab Emirates announced in late June it had bought $100 million worth of World Liberty's crypto tokens, becoming the largest publicly known investor in the business. Yet a review by Reuters of corporate registries, Aqua 1's digital profile and other public information reveal almost nothing about the source of its capital or the person it named as its founding partner, Dave Lee. Reuters could not find a way of contacting Lee directly. An Aqua 1 press release, which was published on as sponsored content, listed an email for a person named Dora Lee as a media contact. In response to a Reuters request, the company last month provided an unsigned statement, saying: "At this stage, we are not disclosing additional information beyond what has been publicly shared.' It added: "Aqua 1 is backed by a group of long-term, mission-aligned partners and led by Dave Lee and a global team with deep expertise in web3 and digital asset infrastructure.' Aqua 1 did not respond to a detailed set of questions for this story. The Trump family receives three-quarters of all token proceeds from World Liberty, meaning the purchase by Aqua 1 will have injected tens of millions of dollars into their personal coffers. The Trumps have now earned around $500 million from World Liberty since the crypto platform was launched last fall, Reuters calculations show. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said that while pursuing a pro-crypto agenda, the president has taken steps to insulate himself from his family's gains. "President Trump is dedicated to making America the crypto capital of the world and revolutionizing our digital financial technology,' Kelly said in an emailed statement. "His assets are in a trust managed by his children, and there are no conflicts of interest.' World Liberty and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. The identities of nearly all of the million-dollar buyers of the World Liberty tokens, which go by $WLFI, are hidden behind anonymous digital wallets. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks next to Crypto czar David Sacks (right) and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the White House Crypto Summit in Washington on March 7. | REUTERS The personal and business backgrounds of several of the top buyers of the tokens, however, are widely known, including those of China-born investor Justin Sun, who with a $75 million investment was the previous biggest publicly known buyer, and Dubai-based market maker DWF Labs, whose managing partner is Andrei Grachev, a crypto entrepreneur from Russia. Representatives for DWF Labs, which in April announced the purchase of $25 million in World Liberty tokens, said the firm does not know Aqua 1 or Lee. Abu Dhabi's state-affiliated investment fund MGX, which chose World Liberty's crypto stablecoin for its $2 billion investment in the Binance exchange, did not respond to a request for comment on Aqua 1, nor did Sun's company Tron. Aqua 1 had said in its June 26 announcement that World Liberty would also support its launch of a separate fund aimed at boosting the Middle East's "digital economy transformation.' Aqua 1 said it would list the new fund in the Abu Dhabi Global Market financial center. A day later, World Liberty said on social media that it was "excited to continue to build the next generation of DeFi' with Aqua 1 and Dave Lee. The Abu Dhabi financial center said by email: "Aqua 1 is not registered, licensed, or affiliated' with it "in any capacity.' World Liberty and Trump's other crypto businesses are facing growing criticism from his U.S. political rivals and ethics experts over their potential for influence peddling. The potential for conflicts of interest that has accompanied Trump's crypto ventures as his administration shapes regulations on the sector have also drawn criticism. In March, UAE officials committed to a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment plan in the United States after meeting with Trump. Richard Painter, a professor at University of Minnesota's law school and former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush said the lack of transparency on investors in the Trump family's crypto business, such as Aqua 1, undermined public confidence in the government. Without more information, Painter said, "everybody assumes the worst' in terms of foreign actors trying to influence the White House. "We ought to know who is sending money to the president,' he said. Minimal profile Aqua 1 describes itself on its website as a "Web3-native fund based in UAE with a global outlook.' Such funds invest in blockchain and crypto firms making products for a futuristic idea of a decentralized internet. Crypto funds seeking to register in the UAE typically choose Abu Dhabi Global Market, the Dubai International Finance Centre or the UAE's Securities and Commodities Authority, said Zainab Kamran, a lawyer at NeosLegal who specializes in digital assets. Donald Trump gestures at the Bitcoin 2024 event in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27, 2024. | REUTERS Registration typically takes between six and 12 months for crypto funds, with funds gravitating towards Abu Dhabi because of its well-developed crypto framework and focus on institutional finance, she said. "The bar is very high,' in the UAE, Kamran said. Reuters could not confirm under which authority, if any, Aqua 1 had registered. A spokeswoman for the regulator of the Dubai International Finance Centre directed Reuters to its public register. The news agency could not identify any entity by the name of Aqua 1 or Aqua 1 Foundation, or anyone by the name of Dave Lee. That was also the case at the register of Dubai's crypto regulator, VARA, a spokesman for which said it "has not engaged with Aqua 1 or Mr. Dave Lee.' Aqua 1 or Aqua 1 Foundation do not appear in the register of UAE Securities and Commodities Authority-licensed companies, either. The authority did not respond to a request for comment. Aqua 1's website was created in May, a month before it announced its investment, according to two web domain trackers, with the names of its registrants redacted. The website contains no information on Aqua 1's leadership or financial backers. Scant public information exists about Lee. An X account in his name, registered in 2023, has made only a handful of posts, starting with an announcement of the World Liberty deal. The account calls Lee an "investor and dreamer,' with a profile picture that features a manga-style portrait of a young man in a bow tie, along with Brazilian, Chinese and U.S. flags. It cites as his locations Sao Paulo, New York, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi. Aqua 1's prior crypto trades suggest a thin investment record. Data from crypto tracker Arkham shows the only large outgoing trades from a wallet tagged " were two transfers totaling $80 million to World Liberty in early June. It had also made transfers of $9 million in March and $3 million in April, both to anonymous crypto wallets. Between March and June, it received about $90 million from an account at the OKX crypto exchange. Aqua 1's assets under management total $100 million, according to a profile on the Medium social publishing platform, suggesting that the World Liberty deal is its only current investment.
New Straits Times
12-07-2025
- Business
- New Straits Times
Trump's US$100m crypto mystery man
OF all the riddles wrapped in the digital wallets sending funds to President Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial crypto business, a little-known entity last month became the biggest. A venture calling itself Aqua 1 Foundation and saying it is based in the United Arab Emirates announced in late June that it had bought US$100 million worth of World Liberty's crypto tokens, becoming the largest publicly known investor in the business. Yet a review by Reuters of corporate registries, Aqua 1's digital profile and other public information reveal almost nothing about the source of its capital or the person it named as its founding partner, Dave Lee. Reuters could not find a way of contacting Lee directly. An Aqua 1 press release listed an email for a person named Dora Lee as a media contact. In response to a Reuters request, the company last month provided an unsigned statement, saying: "At this stage, we are not disclosing additional information beyond what has been publicly shared." It added: "Aqua 1 is backed by a group of long-term, mission-aligned partners and led by Dave Lee and a global team with deep expertise in web3 and digital asset infrastructure." The Trump family receives three-quarters of all token proceeds from World Liberty, meaning the purchase by Aqua 1 will have injected tens of millions of dollars into their personal coffers. The Trumps have now earned around US$500 million from World Liberty since the crypto platform was launched last fall, Reuters calculations show. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said while pursuing a pro-crypto agenda, the president has taken steps to insulate himself from his family's gains. "President Trump is dedicated to making America the crypto capital of the world and revolutionising our digital financial technology," Kelly said in an emailed statement. "His assets are in a trust managed by his children, and there are no conflicts of interest." The identities of nearly all of the million-dollar buyers of the World Liberty tokens, which go by $WLFI, are hidden behind anonymous digital wallets. The personal and business backgrounds of several of the top buyers of the tokens, however, are widely known. These include China-born investor Justin Sun, who with a US$75 million investment was the previous biggest publicly known buyer, and Dubai-based market maker DWF Labs, whose managing partner is Andrei Grachev, a crypto entrepreneur from Russia. Representatives for DWF Labs, which in April announced the purchase of US$25 million in World Liberty tokens, said the firm does not know Aqua 1 or Lee. Abu Dhabi's state-affiliated investment fund MGX, which chose World Liberty's crypto stablecoin for its US$2 billion investment in the Binance exchange, did not respond to a request for comment on Aqua 1, nor did Sun's company Tron. Aqua 1 had said in its June 26 announcement that World Liberty would also support its launch of a separate fund aimed at boosting the Middle East's "digital economy transformation". Aqua 1 said it would list the new fund in the Abu Dhabi Global Market financial centre. A day later, World Liberty said on social media that it was "excited to continue to build the next generation of DeFi" with Aqua 1 and Dave Lee. The Abu Dhabi financial centre, when contected, said by email: "Aqua 1 is not registered, licensed, or affiliated" with it "in any capacity". World Liberty and Trump's other crypto businesses are facing growing criticism from his US political rivals and ethics experts over their potential for influence peddling. The potential for conflicts of interest that has accompanied Trump's crypto ventures as his administration shapes regulations on the sector have also drawn criticism. In March, UAE officials committed to a 10-year, US$1.4 trillion investment plan in the US after meeting with Trump. Richard Painter, a professor at University of Minnesota's law school and former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said the lack of transparency on investors in the Trump family's crypto business, such as Aqua 1, undermined public confidence in the government. Without more information, Painter said, "everybody assumes the worst" in terms of foreign actors trying to influence the White House. "We ought to know who is sending money to the president," he added.
Gizmodo
11-07-2025
- Business
- Gizmodo
Mystery Man Shines a Spotlight on the Shadiness of Trump's Crypto Venture
Last month, the Aqua 1 Foundation, founded by Dave Lee, purchased $100 million worth of tokens from the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial (WLF. Someone putting cash directly into the President's coffers is a normal thing in the Trump era, but there's something odd about this particular purchase. According to Reuters, Aqua 1 is now the largest publicly known holder of World Liberty Financial tokens, but no one seems to know what the business is or who runs it. Aqua 1 put out a press release last month announcing its purchase of $WLFI coins, claiming to be a 'pioneering Web3-native fund' based in the United Arab Emirates. Per Reuters, the financial center for Abu Dhabi said Aqua 1 'is not registered, licensed, or affiliated' with the government 'in any capacity.' The publication also couldn't find Aqua 1 or its founder registered in the Dubai International Finance Centre, and the government's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority had no record of the foundation, either. The company barely has a footprint anywhere, as its website is just 44 days old according to Whois records related to the domain's registration, set up in late May—about a month before dropping $100 million into the Trump family's pockets. It also doesn't appear to have much going on in terms of investments other than giving money to Trump and friends. Reuters cites data from crypto tracker Arkham that shows the company transferring $80 million to World Liberty Financial in June. Prior to that, it made transfers of $9 million in March and $3 million in April to unidentified wallets and received some $90 million from a single account on the OKX crypto exchange. So basically, all of the money it has is now invested in $WLFI. The founder, Dave Lee, is also a bit of a ghost. He has a small social footprint—his X account was registered in 2023, and he barely posts. In fact, he just started posting to announce Aqua 1's work with World Liberty Financial. He claims in one post that his foundation was 'building with World Liberty Financial' behind the scenes and that Aqua 1 had 'Backed it, partnered with it, and now watching it make history.' He provides no details on what is involved in that supposed partnership, other than giving WLF money. For what it's worth, there appears to be people helping WLF behind the scenes and without disclosures: Bloomberg reported that Binance assisted the company with the coding work prior to the launch of the company's stablecoin, USD1—which made the token functional and allowed it to be used the United Arab Emirates to buy a $2 billion stake in Binance. In this case, we know exactly who runs Binance: Changpeng Zhao, who was charged by the U.S. government for money laundering in 2023 and is now seeking a presidential pardon. Probably a coincidence.
NDTV
11-07-2025
- Business
- NDTV
$100 Million Crypto Tokens, Missing Footprint And The Trump Connection
Of all the riddles wrapped in the digital wallets sending funds to President Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial crypto business, a little-known entity last month became the biggest. A venture calling itself Aqua 1 Foundation and saying it is based in the United Arab Emirates announced in late June it had bought $100 million worth of World Liberty's crypto tokens, becoming the largest publicly known investor in the business. Yet a review by Reuters of corporate registries, Aqua 1's digital profile and other public information reveals almost nothing about the source of its capital or the person it named as its founding partner, Dave Lee. Reuters could not find a way of contacting Lee directly. An Aqua 1 press release, which was published on as sponsored content, listed an email for a person named Dora Lee as a media contact. In response to a Reuters request, the company last month provided an unsigned statement, saying: "At this stage, we are not disclosing additional information beyond what has been publicly shared." It added: "Aqua 1 is backed by a group of long-term, mission-aligned partners and led by Dave Lee and a global team with deep expertise in web3 and digital asset infrastructure." Aqua 1 did not respond to a detailed set of questions for this story. The Trump family receives three-quarters of all token proceeds from World Liberty, meaning the purchase by Aqua 1 will have injected tens of millions of dollars into their personal coffers. The Trumps have now earned around $500 million from World Liberty since the crypto platform was launched last fall, Reuters calculations show. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Reuters that while pursuing a pro-crypto agenda, the president has taken steps to insulate himself from his family's gains. "President Trump is dedicated to making America the crypto capital of the world and revolutionizing our digital financial technology," Kelly said in an emailed statement. "His assets are in a trust managed by his children, and there are no conflicts of interest." World Liberty and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. The identities of nearly all of the million-dollar buyers of the World Liberty tokens, which go by $WLFI, are hidden behind anonymous digital wallets. The personal and business backgrounds of several of the top buyers of the tokens, however, are widely known, including those of China-born investor Justin Sun, who with a $75 million investment was the previous biggest publicly known buyer, and Dubai-based market maker DWF Labs, whose managing partner is Andrei Grachev, a crypto entrepreneur from Russia. Representatives for DWF Labs, which in April announced the purchase of $25 million in World Liberty tokens, said the firm does not know Aqua 1 or Lee. Abu Dhabi's state-affiliated investment fund MGX, which chose World Liberty's crypto stablecoin for its $2 billion investment in the Binance exchange, did not respond to a request for comment on Aqua 1, nor did Sun's company Tron. Aqua 1 had said in its June 26 announcement that World Liberty would also support its launch of a separate fund aimed at boosting the Middle East's "digital economy transformation." Aqua 1 said it would list the new fund in the Abu Dhabi Global Market financial centre. A day later, World Liberty said on social media that it was "excited to continue to build the next generation of DeFi" with Aqua 1 and Dave Lee. Contacted by Reuters, the Abu Dhabi financial centre said by email: "Aqua 1 is not registered, licensed, or affiliated" with it "in any capacity." World Liberty and Trump's other crypto businesses are facing growing criticism from his U.S. political rivals and ethics experts over their potential for influence peddling. The potential for conflicts of interest that has accompanied Trump's crypto ventures as his administration shapes regulations on the sector have also drawn criticism. In March, UAE officials committed to a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment plan in the United States after meeting with Trump. Richard Painter, a professor at University of Minnesota's law school and former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush said the lack of transparency on investors in the Trump family's crypto business, such as Aqua 1, undermined public confidence in the government. Without more information, Painter said, "everybody assumes the worst" in terms of foreign actors trying to influence the White House. "We ought to know who is sending money to the president," he said. MINIMAL PROFILE Aqua 1 describes itself on its website as a "Web3-native fund based in UAE with a global outlook." Such funds invest in blockchain and crypto firms making products for a futuristic idea of a decentralized internet. Crypto funds seeking to register in the UAE typically choose Abu Dhabi Global Market, the Dubai International Finance Centre or the UAE's Securities and Commodities Authority, said Zainab Kamran, a lawyer at NeosLegal who specializes in digital assets. Registration typically takes between six and 12 months for crypto funds, with funds gravitating towards Abu Dhabi because of its well-developed crypto framework and focus on institutional finance, she said. "The bar is very high," in the UAE, Kamran said. Reuters could not confirm under which authority, if any, Aqua 1 had registered. A spokeswoman for the regulator of the Dubai International Finance Centre directed Reuters to its public register. The news agency could not identify any entity by the name of Aqua 1 or Aqua 1 Foundation, or anyone by the name of Dave Lee. That was also the case at the register of Dubai's crypto regulator, VARA, a spokesman for which said it "has not engaged with Aqua 1 or Mr. Dave Lee." Aqua 1 or Aqua 1 Foundation do not appear in the register of UAE Securities and Commodities Authority-licensed companies, either. The authority did not respond to a request for comment. Aqua 1's website was created in May, a month before it announced its investment, according to two web domain trackers, with the names of its registrants redacted. The website contains no information on Aqua 1's leadership or financial backers. Scant public information exists about Lee. An X account in his name, registered in 2023, has made only a handful of posts, starting with an announcement of the World Liberty deal. The account calls Lee an "investor and dreamer," with a profile picture that features a manga-style portrait of a young man in a bow tie, along with Brazilian, Chinese and U.S. flags. It cites as his locations Sao Paulo, New York, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi. Aqua 1's prior crypto trades suggest a thin investment record. Data from crypto tracker Arkham shows the only large outgoing trades from a wallet tagged " were two transfers totaling $80 million to World Liberty in early June. It had also made transfers of $9 million in March and $3 million in April, both to anonymous crypto wallets. Between March and June, it received about $90 million from an account at the OKX crypto exchange. Aqua 1's assets under management total $100 million, according to a profile on the Medium social publishing platform, suggesting that the World Liberty deal is its only current investment.
