An investment firm tied to United Arab Emirates (UAE) National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a contract to invest $500 million in the Trump-affiliated crypto venture World Liberty Financial just days before last year’s presidential inauguration, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The deal is said to be associated with the purchase of a 49% stake in the crypto business, with half of the $500 million related to the deal paid upfront. Eric Trump reportedly signed the agreement, with $187 million already received by entities associated with the Trump family.
The deal has triggered allegations of “mind-blowing corruption†from U.S. Senator Chris Murphy and other Democrats, who also added in an X post, “Trump reversed decades of national security objections to selling advanced AI chips to UAE. National security experts were alarmed.â€
Indeed, the reported decision to allow the UAE to purchase hundreds of thousands of AI chips from Nvidia happened just months after Tahnoon’s investment in World Liberty Financial took place. According to CNBC, the Biden administration blocked such an agreement on fears that the chips would eventually end up in China. Tahnoon’s own AI company, G42, is said to be acquiring 20% of the chips.
Of course, this is not the first time crypto-related corruption allegations have been levied at Trump, or even the World Liberty Financial entity specifically. Previously, Trump granted a pardon to Binance co-founder and former CEO Changepeng “CZ†Zhao following a deal involving World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin that is expected to enable tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue for the company. Notably, this deal also involved another firm led by Tahnoon, MGX, as the deal was an investment in Binance made via the stablecoin.
World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token, which is separate from the associated stablecoin and equity shares, was also recently at the center of pay-to-play allegations levied at Trump’s SEC, as crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun reportedly purchased tens of millions of dollars worth of the crypto token before having his case with the financial regulatory body stayed. Sun has also claimed to be the largest holder of Trump’s memecoin and attended a dinner for TRUMP token holders last year, which Trump also attended.
The Trump family has been extensively involved in the crypto industry as the president has been working to implement a pro-crypto regulatory environment at the federal level. Last year, the passage of the GENIUS Act provided regulatory clarity for stablecoins in the United States, and the creation of a national bitcoin reserve is still in the works. All the while, the Trump family fortune is said to have enjoyed a $1.4 billion bump last year from their crypto-related ventures alone.
Most of the activity during Trump’s “crypto presidency†has been focused on centralized stablecoins and so-called “shitcoins,†which recently-revealed emails showed even Jeffrey Epstein thought were unethical, at least so far. And with Coinbase recently pulling support for a draft version of the CLARITY Act, there are now concerns from Bitcoin users that they won’t get meaningful change from a regulatory perspective in terms of things like protections for developers and a potential de minimis tax exemption for bitcoin payments. Additionally, developers of privacy-focused bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet are currently serving out prison sentences for convictions not too dissimilar from CZ’s, creating the appearance of preference for those who have business ties to Trump.
With all that said, there are signs that even Trump has his limits when it comes to allegedly corrupt crypto dealings, as disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s attempts to praise the president on social media in an effort to get a pardon do not appear to be working.
