Conflict Coin: How the Trumps’ Billion-Dollar Crypto Stake Depends on a Company That Helped Iran Evade Sanctions
By Zach Everson
Executive summary
Donald Trump and his three sons now have around $1 billion tied to World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture they launched in 2024 with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s now special envoy for peace, and his sons Alex and Zach, the latter of whom is its CEO.
This massive business interest has allied Trump and his family with Binance, even though that crypto exchange has pleaded guilty to “anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations” regarding Iran and other sanctioned countries and entered into a settlement acknowledging that it unlawfully facilitated financial transfers to organizations designated as foreign terrorists by the United States.
The Trumps’ and Witkoffs’ largest business partner in World Liberty Financial is a fund backed by the United Arab Emirates. Four days before Trump took office, an entity controlled by the deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi—who also serves as the national security adviser of the United Arab Emirates—purchased a 49% stake in the venture, a fact not revealed for more than a year. The UAE purchase put $187 million into the coffers of the Trump family. The UAE partnership creates a massive conflict of interest for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, as Trump prosecutes a war against Iran. The arrangement also raises serious questions under the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause—and crypto’s opacity may make the full extent of foreign government involvement impossible to trace.
Even with the U.S. undertaking military action in Iran and U.S. officials investigating Binance’s compliance with sanctions against the country, World Liberty Financial looked to strengthen its relationship with the exchange. On March 21 and again on March 28, Binance and World Liberty Financial announced another promotion to encourage USD1 holders to keep their stablecoins at the exchange.
The Trumps’ billion-dollar stake in World Liberty Financial
Despite once tweeting that cryptocurrency’s value is “based on thin air,” Trump launched World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that claims to be decentralized, in the stretch run of the 2024 presidential election. “We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind,” he said in the announcement.
World Liberty Financial states that a key part of its mission is “to leverage the global reach and recognition of the Trump brand,” and Trump’s face is splashed across the cover of the venture’s gold paper. The venture claims it was “inspired by the vision of Donald J. Trump” who is its co-founder emeritus and “chief crypto advocate” according to corporate documents. His three sons—Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump—are listed as co-founders. Trump’s “good friend” of 40 years and current special envoy for peace, billionaire Steve Witkoff—who has led U.S. diplomatic negotiations with Iran—is the venture’s other co-founder emeritus. Witkoff’s son Alex is a co-founder while son Zach is a co-founder and World Liberty Financial’s CEO. The Witkoffs own an unspecified stake in the company and receive a cut of token sales.
The Trumps also own a substantial part of the company and have a stake in its financial performance. DT Marks DEFI LLC, which Trump owns 70% of while unidentified Trump family members own the remaining 30%, holds approximately 38% of the equity interests in WLF Holdco LLC. That LLC holds the only membership interest in World Liberty Financial LLC and holds all rights to its net protocol revenues (other than net proceeds from the sale of $WLFI tokens), according to the fine print on World Liberty Financial’s website. Through a series of LLCs, Trump’s stake resides completely in his revocable trust, of which he is the sole donor and beneficiary, while Donald Trump Jr. serves as the sole trustee, according to the president’s financial disclosure, trust documents, and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
DT Marks DEFI LLC along with unnamed Trump family members hold 22.5 billion $WLFI tokens. That cryptocurrency is not backed by any other assets (there are no reserves or collateral) and does not convey ownership in any company. It just allows holders to propose and vote on rules regarding the protocol—but public token buyers hold only about a third of all tokens. The rest are held by the Trump family and other insiders or distributed at their discretion, meaning outsiders would have a hard time outvoting them. $WLFI was trading at $0.07869 on April 21. The Trumps’ tokens appear to be locked up and unavailable to trade, for now. But even applying a discount because of that restriction, Forbes valued the Trumps’ token pile at $175 million in March 2026. The Trumps’ LLC is also entitled to 75% of $WLFI token sale proceeds after some deductions.
The arrangement has paid off handsomely for the president and his sons. He reported earning $57.4 million in just its first three months on his latest financial disclosure, which covers through the end of 2024. By March 2026, Forbes estimated Trump had netted $550 million from token sales. The outlet valued his stake in the venture at $240 million and his share of the $WLFI tokens at $175 million. Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump’s stakes in World Liberty Financial are each worth at least $133 million, Forbes estimated in late 2025.
World Liberty Financial was responsible for almost all of the 15% increase in Steve Witkoff’s wealth over the past year, adding $280 million to his net worth and bringing his fortune to $2.3 billion, Forbes estimated in April 2026.
Table 1: The Trumps’ and Witkoffs’ roles in World Liberty Financial
| Name | Role in WLF | Government/Other role | Estimated financial gains |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donald Trump | Co-founder emeritus, inspiration, chief-crypto advocate | U.S. president | $550 million from token sales. Ownership stake worth $240 million. Tokens valued at $175 million. |
| Donald Trump Jr. | Co-founder | President’s son, sole trustee of Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust | Added $133 million to net worth |
| Eric Trump | Co-founder | President’s son | Added $133 million to net worth |
| Barron Trump | Co-founder | President’s son | Added $133 million to net worth |
| Steve Witkoff | Co-founder emeritus | U.S. special envoy for peace, U.S. negotiator with Iran | Added $280 million to net worth |
| Zach Witkoff | Co-founder, CEO | Special envoy’s son | Unknown |
| Alex Witkoff | Co-founder | Special envoy’s son | Unknown |
Sources: World Liberty Financial disclosures, Forbes reporting
World Liberty Financial’s ‘integral’ relationship with Binance
To reap those windfalls, World Liberty Financial relies heavily on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap, a crypto data provider. Binance has had no official headquarters, but in December 2025, it secured a global license in Abu Dhabi—the same emirate whose deputy ruler secretly purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial. By the time Trump’s crypto venture launched, Binance had already agreed to one of the largest corporate fines in U.S. history for violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and agreed to exit the U.S. market.
In fall 2024, almost a year after Binance admitted to violating U.S. law, it “donated software to World Liberty to help the Trump family venture launch a cryptocurrency,” CBS’s 60 Minutes reported. The partnership between World Liberty Financial and Binance has continued and, in fact, expanded after that initial assistance.
Meanwhile, Trump’s government has retreated from law enforcement against the crypto industry. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to identify instances of “weaponized” enforcement—what Public Citizen warned amounted to a “get out of jail free” card for corporate lawbreakers. In April 2025, the deputy attorney general issued a memo titled “Ending Regulation By Prosecution,” directing the department not to pursue actions against crypto platforms for the acts of their users and to close ongoing inconsistent investigations.
Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission dismissed a lawsuit against Binance that the agency had filed during the Biden administration, Trump pardoned its founder, and the administration has dismissed or withdrawn at least 21 crypto cases involving other companies.
In addition to $WLFI, World Liberty Financial’s other core product is USD1, a stablecoin it announced in March 2025, backed 1:1 with U.S. dollars and government money market funds. Stablecoin issuers typically make money similarly to traditional banks: they take cash deposited by stablecoin users and invest it in safe assets, pocketing the interest. So the more USD1 in circulation, the more reserves World Liberty Financial has to invest, the more money it makes for its owners, including the Trumps.
In May 2025, Binance received a $2 billion investment denominated in the fledgling USD1 from MGX, a state-backed Abu Dhabi fund chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s deputy ruler and the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser. The move essentially allowed World Liberty Financial—and the Trumps—to make interest off the $2 billion for as long as that USD1 is in circulation. The deal also gave the Trump-backed stablecoin some intangible benefits: “It took World Liberty from being a small project that maybe was on the road map after the election, purely for the name, to being one of the largest stablecoins in the world in a single transaction,” Austin Campbell, a former crypto executive who now teaches at New York University, told 60 Minutes. It currently ranks as the fifth largest stablecoin by market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap.
World Liberty Financial’s dependence on Binance for the launch of USD1 extends much further. In May 2025, trading in USD1 on PancakeSwap—a crypto trading platform Binance employees quietly created in-house in 2020 and continued to supervise—exploded from tens of millions of dollars a day to regularly more than $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported in August 2025, citing people familiar with the company, including former employees, as well as data from the platform and CoinMarketCap. “Over 90% of USD1 trades have taken place on PancakeSwap,” the Journal reported. But that volume was not driven by organic demand—“It was because crypto investors were chasing prizes worth up to $1 million for generating as much USD1 trading as possible as part of a ‘Liquidity Drive,’” according to the Journal.
In December 2025, World Liberty Financial said Binance would convert the assets it had set aside to back a token tied to its sunsetting stablecoin, BUSD, into USD1. That move “further embedd[ed] the stablecoin within the exchange’s ecosystem,” making it “an integral part of Binance’s updated collateral structure,” according to the announcement. That month, Binance also offered zero trading fees between USD1 and two other popular stablecoins, thereby encouraging adoption of the Trumps’ product.
Between its own wallets and its users’ accounts, Binance holds $3.56 billion of the $4.25 billion of USD1 in circulation. That’s 84%—the highest concentration at any third-party holder among the top 10 stablecoins by market cap (the median is 23%). Binance agreed to completely exit the U.S. market under the terms of its 2023 settlement with the Treasury Department. So, if the rules are being followed, at least 84% of USD1 is held by overseas interests.
Both parties appear to be looking to deepen that concentration. In December 2025, Binance launched a promotion that awarded some USD1 holders an annual percentage rate of 20%. In late January, two days after Binance announced a promotion where USD1 holders would be awarded $40 million in $WLFI, Trump’s crypto venture transferred about that much worth of $WLFI to Binance, according to Etherscan, a blockchain analytics platform. Molly White, a crypto researcher, told Forbes the promotion was among the most generous she’s seen.
Table 2: Top 10 Stablecoins by Market Cap, Share Held at Largest Exchange, as of April 21, 2026
| Rank | Currency | Symbol | Market cap | Top holder | Value held | % at top holder |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tether | USDT | $187,915,978,826.50 | Binance | $43,940,000,000 | 23.38% |
| 2 | USD Coin | USDC | $77,978,014,877.58 | Binance | $10,820,000,000 | 13.88% |
| 3 | Dai | DAI | $5,364,279,693.00 | Polygon | $922,770,000 | 17.20% |
| 4 | Ethena USDe | USDe | $4,776,923,664.24 | Ethena | $4,410,000,000 | 92.32% |
| 5 | World Liberty Financial | USD1 | $4,249,676,286.99 | Binance | $3,560,000,000 | 83.77% |
| 6 | PayPal USD | PYUSD | $3,727,988,256.70 | USD AI | $282,670,000 | 7.58% |
| 7 | Global Dollar | USDG | $2,322,707,440.40 | OKX | $745,570,000 | 32.10% |
| 8 | Ripple USD | RLUSD | $1,446,997,462.41 | Aave | $121,190,000 | 8.38% |
| 9 | USDD | USDD | $1,330,195,363.00 | JUST | $305,390,000 | 22.96% |
| 10 | United Stables | U | $1,025,292,118.88 | Binance | $442,930,000 | 43.20% |
Sources: Public Citizen analyses of data from Arkham and CoinMarketCap
Binance’s role in Iranian sanctions evasion and financing of designated terrorist organizations
The criminal sanctions violations that led to Binance’s record penalty appear to be largely tied to Iran. The exchange processed $8 billion worth of Iranian transactions between 2018 and November 2022 despite U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported, citing data from blockchain researcher Chainalysis. Between January 2019 and May 2022, “Binance willfully caused over $898 million in trades between U.S. users and users ordinarily resident in Iran” by failing to “implement controls that would prevent U.S. users from trading with users in Iran,” as required by U.S. sanctions, according to the Department of Justice.
In November 2023, Binance admitted “it engaged in anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations” regarding Iran and other sanctioned countries. It agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties, one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history. Binance founder and then-CEO Changpeng Zhao also “pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program” and was sentenced to four months in prison. In announcing a separate settlement with Binance that month, the Treasury Department said the crypto exchange ”failed to implement programs to prevent and report suspicious transactions with terrorists”—including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, each of which the State Department says is backed by Iran.
Binance, however, continued to help Iranian crypto traders skirt sanctions, according to recent media reports. Entities tied to Iran received more than $1 billion through Binance from March 2024 through August 2025—all while Binance was operating under a court-ordered DOJ compliance monitor as part of its 2023 plea deal—according to the company’s own compliance team, Fortune reported in February 2026, citing internal documents and multiple sources. Binance later fired at least five of the investigators who internally flagged the transactions.
Binance hosted accounts used by at least eight entities and individuals that the Treasury Department has sanctioned for supporting terrorism or terrorist-designated groups linked to Iran, according to Public Citizen’s analysis of government press releases and a federal lawsuit filed in November 2025 by American families of victims of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel [1]. Some entities were sanctioned or prosecuted by Trump’s own administration.
- In July 2025, Trump’s Justice Department announced a $2 million civil forfeiture action filed against Buy Cash Money and Money Transfer Company, “a Gaza-based money transfer business that was involved in financially supporting Hamas.” In the government’s complaint, it alleges “users utilized BuyCash to fund accounts at Binance and to fund unhosted wallet addresses containing USDT (or Tether) to obfuscate their financial support of international terrorist organizations, including Hamas.” According to the Oct. 7 lawsuit, “public blockchain data between March 29, 2021, and September 1, 2025, shows that Binance was responsible for 90% of the funds sent by BuyCash to crypto exchanges,” which totaled more than $250 million. An investigation by crypto intelligence firm Nominis went so far as to say, “further investigation suggests that [Buy Cash] is not only used by Hamas, but is run by Hamas.”
- In September 2025, Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand for “coordinat[ing] to facilitate the purchase of over $100 million worth of cryptocurrency for oil sales for the Iranian government.” According to the Oct. 7 lawsuit, the Iranian nationals used Binance to transfer at least $30 million.
U.S. officials continue to probe the company. In February 2026, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., opened an inquiry into Binance allowing $1.7 billion to flow to Iranian proxies and Russia’s shadow fleet. “Instead of actually preventing illicit use,” Blumenthal wrote, “Binance has sought to evade accountability and influence the White House through lobbying and a financial partnership with World Liberty Financial.” He specifically asked Binance to produce all records on the use of USD1 “in connection to sanction evasion, criminal activities, money laundering, and the provision of support to terrorist organizations.” In March 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Justice opened an investigation into Iran’s use of Binance to evade sanctions.
Even with the U.S. launching a war against Iran and U.S. officials investigating Binance’s compliance with sanctions against the country, World Liberty Financial looked to strengthen its relationship with the exchange. On March 21 and again on March 28, Binance and World Liberty Financial announced another promotion to encourage USD1 holders to keep their stablecoins at the exchange. On April 20, they extended the promotion.
World Liberty Financial’s entanglements beyond Binance related to Trump’s war in Iran
Four days before Trump’s inauguration, a company backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan—Abu Dhabi’s deputy ruler, the UAE’s national security adviser and chair of the firm that would later direct $2 billion in USD1 to Binance—purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the Wall Street Journal reported. The deal, which was a secret until the Journal’s 2026 article, routed $187 million to Trump family entities and $31 million to entities associated with the Witkoffs. The UAE, of course, has a major interest in U.S. policy towards Iran, with The Economist reporting that “The United Arab Emirates has warned against talks with Tehran, saying that Iran is committing ‘economic terrorism’ in the region.” On April 21, Trump said the United States was considering offering financial support to the UAE, which “has been contending with economic fallout from the war,” the New York Times reported.
Pakistan has hosted ministers from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt to discuss the war, as well as high-level talks between the United States and Iran. The Pakistani government, is also a business partner of World Liberty Financial, which is helping the country integrate blockchain technology into its financial system, according to a press release from the Ministry of Finance. World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff—son of one of Trump’s top negotiators with Iran—“showed keen interest to engage with Pakistan” and “expressed keen desire to further deepen engagement,” the ministry wrote. The son of the man negotiating with Iran on behalf of the United States is simultaneously pursuing business deals with—and meeting with the prime minister of the country and its top military official—mediating those negotiations.
In January 2026, the Pakistani government signed a memorandum of understanding with SC Financial Technologies, which it described as “an affiliated entity of World Liberty Financial.” That firm was at least partially owned by Steven Witkoff as of August 2025, according to his latest financial disclosure, which the Office of Government Ethics made available in March 2026. (Witkoff’s stake in World Liberty Financial was sold to his sons in January 2026, the New York Times reported, citing a White House official.) Additionally, the chair of Pakistan’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, Bilal Bin Saqib, previously was an adviser to World Liberty Financial, Bloomberg reported.
Conclusion
The Trump family’s entanglement with Binance exposes a dangerous contradiction at the heart of U.S. foreign policy: The same exchange that helped build the infrastructure for and holds the vast majority of Trump’s USD1 stablecoin has facilitated billions of dollars in transactions for Iran and designated terrorist organizations.
The opacity that defines crypto isn’t a bug. It’s the feature that makes it useful to both speculators and sanctioned regimes, and the president of the United States is profiting from it.
Even as the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Iran’s use of Binance to evade sanctions, the administration has systematically dismantled enforcement tools that would hold the exchange accountable. The American people deserve to know that when their president takes an official action, he’s doing so because he thinks it will benefit the country—not because it’s helping out his business partners. Sanctions lose credibility, to put it modestly, when the president and one of his chief negotiators profit from a platform undermining them.
The Constitution states, “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Four days before Donald Trump returned to such a position, his business struck a deal with the deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s National Security Adviser that saw $187 million routed to Trump family entities in exchange for an ownership stake in World Liberty Financial, a fledgling crypto company.
Crypto also can make Emoluments Clause violations invisible. When a foreign government books Trump hotel rooms, there should be a paper trail. But when a foreign state actor buys USD1 through Binance—essentially giving the president’s business an interest-free loan that it, in turn, can earn interest off of—there may be no way to identify them. Via Binance, the president is selling a financial product to anonymous buyers who should be exclusively outside the United States—and neither Congress nor the public can know whether those buyers include foreign governments, sanctioned entities, or designated terrorists.
In July 2025, the Justice Department announced it seized approximately $2 million worth of cryptocurrency connected to Hamas fundraising. The funds were seized via Binance and Tether, according to the DOJ’s complaint. When announcing the seizure, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that the Justice Department is “aggressively dismantling the financial infrastructure of terrorism and refusing to allow our digital currency platforms to become safe havens for terrorist financing.”
Meanwhile, her boss does business with just such a platform.
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