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Politics|At a Dubai Conference, Trump’s Conflicts Take Center Stage
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/trump-cryptocurrency-usd1-dubai-conference-announcement.html
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A deal for a state-backed Emirati firm to use a Trump-affiliated digital coin was announced in a panel that included the president’s son and his business partner, who promised, “This is only the beginning.”
May 1, 2025Updated 1:13 p.m. ET
Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.
That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s crypto firm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.
Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, revealed that a so-called stablecoin developed by the firm, would be used to complete the transaction between the state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX and Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.
Virtually every detail of Mr. Witkoff’s announcement, made during a conference panel with Mr. Trump’s second-eldest son, contained a conflict of interest.
MGX’s use of the World Liberty stablecoin, USD1, brings a Trump family company into business with a venture firm backed by a foreign government. The deal creates a formal link between World Liberty and Binance — a company that has been under U.S. government oversight since 2023, when it admitted to violating federal money-laundering laws.
And the splashy announcement served as an advertisement to crypto investors worldwide about the potential for forming a partnership with a company tied to President Trump, who is listed as World Liberty’s chief crypto advocate.
