In this news:
The Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial announced Thursday that its stablecoin will be used to complete a $2 billion transaction between MGX, an investment firm owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, and cryptocurrency exchange Binance. You really can’t even begin to count just how many conflicts of interest are taking place in the above sentence, but we’ll try.
Let’s start with the announcement, which took place at Token2049, a massive cryptocurrency conference held in the United Arab Emirates. The announcement was made on stage Thursday by Zach Witkoff, one of the co-founders of World Liberty Financial, alongside Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. Witkoff is the son of billionaire Trump buddy Steve Witkoff, who happens to currently serve as the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East.
So far, we’ve got the sons of the President of the United States and the son of a federal representative announcing a business deal on stage in a region that is an essential trade partner.
As for what was announced: State-owned investment fund MGX, established last year by the government of Abu Dhabi to back artificial intelligence projects, will invest $2 billion worth of stablecoins into cryptocurrency exchange Binance. They will be using World Liberty Financial’s recently launched stablecoin, USD1, to complete this transaction.
The web is about to get much more tangled, but here we go: MGX is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who also serves as the National Security Advisor for the country. According to the New York Times, Tahnoon was in the United States meeting with President Trump and his cabinet. In April, Eric Trump announced that the Trump Organization has agreed to build an 80-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Dubai, part of the UAE. Meanwhile, President Trump plans to visit the region in the coming weeks and is reportedly currently weighing the possibility of a deal that would ease restrictions on Nvidia selling to the UAE, per Bloomberg.
As for the Binance of it all, the cryptocurrency exchange has been scrutinized by US regulators since 2023, when the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the company and founder Changpeng Zhao of artificially inflating trading volumes, diverting customer funds, and misleading investors. The agency’s ongoing civil lawsuit against Binance was put on hold in February, after Trump took office and pledged to ease up on regulations on cryptocurrency.
Oh, and here’s one more conflict of interest, just for the hell of it: Also on stage when Witkoff and Eric Trump during the announcement of the transaction was Justin Sun, the founder of crypto platform TRON, which received scrutiny from the SEC for allegedly manipulating the price of the cryptocurrency. Sun bought $75 million worth of World Liberty Financial’s cryptocurrency token, $WLFI, after the 2024 presidential election, and Trump subsequently asked for the SEC’s case against Sun to be paused once he took office. According to the Times, Witkoff told Sun on stage, “TRON is just an incredible technology, and we’re lucky to be partners with you.”
You gotta hand it to Trump and company here. This deal is absolutely air-tight, in that there is not a single aspect of it that is not deeply compromised in some way. That level of corruption really takes work, but they’ve done it.
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