Just days before President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term, his family’s cryptocurrency firm, World Liberty Financial, sold a 49% stake to an Emirati royal for $500 million.
The buyer, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is the UAE’s national security advisor, the deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi, and the brother of the country’s president.
The deal reportedly resulted in as much as $187 million flowing directly into the Trump family’s pockets.
According to reporting by ABC News and The Wall Street Journal, the transaction took place on Jan. 16, 2025, just four days before Trump’s inauguration.
Tahnoon’s firm, Aryam Investment 1, purchased nearly half of World Liberty Financial, a crypto company founded in late 2024 by Steve Witkoff and Zach Witkoff, with heavy involvement from Trump and his sons.
Trump and his family controlled around 75% of the company through DT Marks Defi LLC.
Forbes estimates Trump personally received about $260 million from the deal, while his sons split another $100 million.
AI Chip Deal Raises New Concerns
What raises eyebrows is what came after. In the months following the investment, the Trump administration approved a deal to provide the UAE with sensitive U.S.-made AI chips, the same chips the previous administration refused to sell over fears they could end up in Chinese hands.
David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, denied any link between the investment and U.S. policy decisions.
“Neither President Trump nor Steve Witkoff had any involvement whatsoever in this transaction,” he told ABC News.
“Any claim that this deal had anything to do with the Administration’s actions on chips is 100% false.”
Mounting Criticism and Ethics Concerns
But questions continue to swirl. Ethics experts say the situation is unprecedented: a sitting president’s family profiting from a massive foreign investment, while that foreign government soon receives valuable and previously restricted military-grade technology.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in a statement that the arrangement was “corruption, plain and simple.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) posted, “Foreign countries are bribing our president to sell out the American people.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who introduced the End Crypto Corruption Act in 2025, told Forbes:
“Trump’s crypto cons are the Mt. Everest of corruption—selling influence to line his own pockets.”
A Highly Profitable Venture for the Trump Family
The financial benefit to the Trump family was extraordinary.
Even before the UAE deal, Forbes estimated they had pocketed $780 million through World Liberty’s token sales alone.
According to reporting and analysis by Forbes, which interpreted details from the Wall Street Journal’s investigation, the sale to Tahnoon did not appear to include rights to token revenue, meaning the Trump family may have continued receiving 75% of profits from token sales even after giving up nearly half the company.
Two months after the stake sale, World Liberty launched a new product: a stablecoin called USD1.
Shortly afterward, a UAE state-backed firm, chaired by Tahnoon, MGX, invested $2 billion into Binance using USD1.
That transaction caused USD1’s market cap to skyrocket from $140 million to over $2 billion in a single day. Forbes called it the moment USD1 became a serious player in the stablecoin industry.
What Did the UAE Really Get?
Still, analysts questioned what the UAE truly gained. The $500 million investment in World Liberty has yet to show clear returns, and some suggest the deal made little sense financially unless political access or influence was part of the equation.
Around the same time, the U.S. and UAE announced a $1.4 billion arms deal, and the UAE pledged $1.4 trillion in U.S. investments over the next decade, a sum more than double its annual GDP.
MGX, the same UAE firm tied to Tahnoon, also secured a stake in the Trump-brokered TikTok U.S. joint venture.
White House Denials, but Doubts Persist
In response to mounting criticism, White House counsel David Warrington said, “The President has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities.”
Spokesperson Anna Kelly added, “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public. There are no conflicts of interest.”
However, critics note that Trump’s assets are held in a trust managed by his children, which is not a traditional blind trust with an independent trustee.
That structure allows Trump to legally remain insulated from direct management while still benefiting from company profits.
The Bigger Picture: Americans Left Behind
The Trump-UAE crypto controversy underscores a familiar pattern: powerful political figures accumulating personal wealth while many Americans face economic uncertainty.
World Liberty Financial’s windfall came at a time when millions of U.S. families were dealing with high prices, housing instability, and stagnant wages.
Against that backdrop, a $500 million foreign investment into the president’s family business raises questions that go beyond legality.
It’s hard to square a $500 million private deal with the daily realities most Americans face, rising rents, grocery bills, and medical costs.
Seeing foreign royals pour money into a president’s family business while policies shift in their favor doesn’t exactly inspire trust that regular people are being put first.
As Trump’s net worth climbs, reportedly over $7.3 billion, so does public scrutiny.
Was World Liberty ever built with public interest in mind, or was it always a tool for personal enrichment?
These questions don’t just speak to one administration. They speak to a broader concern: when political power and private wealth mix, who gets left behind?
IMAGE CREDIT: “President Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Image adjusted for layout.