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https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2026/02/02/why-the-trump-uae-crypto-deal-made-no-financial-sense-for-the-emiratis/

TL:DR version- UAE's National Security advisor, who is the brother of UAE's President bought into Trump's crypto which personally benefitted the Trump family for more than $260M. Completely coincidentally, 2 weeks later Trump gave the UAE access to advanced AI chips that the previous administration had prevented the UAE from getting due to national security concerns.





"... (J)ust 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."

"Aryam Investment 1, a “Tahnoon-backed company,” purchased 49% of World Liberty Financial for $500 million delivered in multiple installments... 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."

"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 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."

"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"

"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.