Right before Donald Trump’s second inauguration, he and his family were spurring a crypto frenzy. On January 17, three days ahead of his swearing in, he released a memecoin, a hype vehicle that eventually added an estimated $1 billion or so to his net worth in 2025. Thanks to a Wall Street Journal investigation published on Saturday, we now know that just one day earlier, one of the family’s other crypto ventures—World Liberty Financial, launched in September 2024—penned a deal with Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who heads up multiple United Arab Emirates investment funds and serves as the country’s national security advisor and the deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi; his brother is the UAE’s president.
Forbes first reported the likelihood that the Trumps had secretly sold a stake in World Liberty Financial back in June. According to the Journal’s reporting, Aryam Investment 1, a “Tahnoon-backed company,” purchased 49% of World Liberty Financial for $500 million delivered in multiple installments. Before the deal, which was later confirmed by World Liberty, the Trump family owned about 75% of World Liberty Financial through a company called DT Marks Defi LLC, and that company was split 70-30 between Trump and his family members, according to Trump’s most recent financial disclosure. It’s likely that Trump’s cut of the $500 million sale, before any taxes, would thus have been roughly $260 million in all. His three sons would have split another $100 million or so, Forbes estimates.
Here’s the problem: While the Trumps got to fill their pockets with royal cash, it’s unclear what, if anything, the Emiratis got out of the deal, at least from a financial perspective.
Prior to the sale, World Liberty’s only revenue came from selling about $82 million of the $WLFI tokens, the Journal reports, and DT Marks Defi LLC was entitled to three quarters of the proceeds after the first $15 million of sales. But the 49% stake Tahnoon bought in World Liberty didn’t come with a cut of these token revenues, the Journal report says—instead, the Trumps continued to get 75% despite owning a smaller chunk of the company. Assuming that’s true, it would be like buying a stake in Apple without benefitting from its iPhone sales or a stake in OpenAI that excluded revenue from artificial intelligence.
World Liberty’s token sale revenues have been extraordinarily lucrative for the president and his sons—even before this UAE deal, Forbes estimated that the first family pocketed an estimated $780 million as of September. The president’s net worth ballooned to $7.3 billion as of that month, up $3 billion since he entered the White House the second time. Eric, Donald Trump Jr. and Barron were worth $750 million, $500 million and $150 million respectively at the time, and much of their newfound wealth came from World Liberty and other crypto ventures.
World Liberty would eventually spawn another product that gave Tahnoon and his investment companies some value. In March, two months after this deal was reportedly completed, World Liberty announced a stablecoin—a cryptocurrency backed by real-world assets that hold a constant value—called USD1, which is intended as somewhat of a digital version of the U.S. dollar. That part of the company, which makes money by parking deposited cash in Treasurys and keeping the returns, might be worth about $800 million or so, Forbes estimates, so a 49% stake would be worth about $400 million, still less than the $500 million that the Emiratis paid.
And there’s a wrinkle: Part of the reason USD1 has the value it does is because of a different, subsequent deal backed by—that’s right—Sheikh Tahnoon and the Emiratis. In March, MGX, a state-owned UAE investment firm chaired by Tahnoon, announced a $2 billion investment in Binance, a crypto exchange. It later decided to use USD1 as its “currency” of choice to close the deal. The market cap of USD1 soared overnight from $140 million on April 29 to over $2.1 billion on April 30. (Today, its market cap is around $5 billion.) In other words, that $2 billion influx of cash from Tahnoon appears to have gotten USD1 off the ground, making it a serious player in the stablecoin industry.
Given Forbes’ analysis of the deal, it is a wonder why the Emiratis would invest. Did they make a bad business call, betting—incorrectly, so far—that World Liberty would be lucrative enough that they’d eventually make their money back? Or did they have ulterior motives?
It’s worth noting that the United States and the UAE went on a dealmaking spree together last year. In his role as the UAE’s national security advisor, Tahnoon secured his country access to powerful AI chips that the U.S. had previously kept close to the chest due to national security concerns. That deal was announced on May 15, just two weeks after the Binance-MGX-USD1 deal went through, and was reportedly negotiated in part by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who along with his son Zach co-founded World Liberty Financial.
The Defense Department also announced potential arms sales totaling $1.4 billion to the UAE, where the U.S. has an Air Force base and 3,500 deployed troops, that same month. The UAE did make a big promise in exchange for the above deals: $1.4 trillion in investments in the United States over ten years. That figure is more than twice as large as the tiny monarchy’s entire annual economy. Just last month, MGX, the state-owned, Tahoon-chaired UAE investment firm, was able to purchase a stake in the Trump-brokered sale of TikTok.
All this smoke has Democrats in Congress shouting fire. “Corruption, plain and simple,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Trump is bought and paid for by Abu Dhabi royals,” Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego wrote. After the Binance-MGX-USD1 deal was announced last year, Trump opponents in the Senate filed a resolution to enforce the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which bars presidents from “accept[ing] of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” without Congress’ consent. Republicans blocked the measure. Warren and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley wrote to Binance and MGX at that time, asking why they settled the transaction in USD1 rather than fiat or another cryptocurrency. Any responses have not been made public. The senators also pressed the Office of Government Ethics to weigh in. That office has not responded to their request.
But all involved parties have strenuously denied any connection between Trump-tied cryptocurrency deals and official agreements. David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty, called Forbes’ assertions “laughable” and denied that World Liberty’s deal with Tahnoon had anything to do with the Trump administration’s chips deal. “We are proud to report that since this investment took place, our company has grown materially,” he added. “Based on current operations, adoption, and transaction volume, World Liberty Financial today would be valued well in excess of the original investment level.” MGX chief communications officer Noelle Camilleri did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but has previously told Forbes that her company used USD1 to invest in Binance because of its business suitability, the currency of its backing assets and its “compliance history” (though USD1 was brand new at the time). Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, pointed to statements previously made to the Journal. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public,” she wrote. “There are no conflicts of interest.”
Dan Alexander contributed reporting