Trump sold 49% of WLFI to UAE royal through reported $500M investment in USD1 digital dollar

New reports says Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, or investors tied to him, agreed in January 2025 to invest $500 million into Trump-linked World Liberty Financial for about a 49% stake.

WLFI, the governance token of World Liberty Financial, has currently decoupled from Bitcoin price, up around 8% today amid a flat market still attempting to recover from the weekend dip.

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World Liberty Financial WLFI

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Market Cap $3.42B

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DeFi Made in USA Token

According to The Wall Street Journal, the arrangement has become public only now as scrutiny grows over how stablecoin issuers can sit at the intersection of cross-border capital, payments rails and U.S. policy leverage.

The reporting also alleges $187 million of the investment flowed to Trump family entities, a detail that could sharpen conflict-of-interest questions as World Liberty expands USD1, its dollar-pegged token, into institutional settlement use cases.

The stake size matters for governance as much as economics.

At 49%, an investor can approach “blocking” leverage over major corporate actions depending on voting thresholds and board representation, even without majority ownership.

Available information has not pinned down whether the equity sits in World Liberty Financial directly or through a holding structure.

Investigative reporter for the Journal, Rebecca Ballhaus, stated,

Using DeFi Llama’s tracker, USD1’s roughly $5.014 billion market cap places it around 1.6% of the overall stablecoin market.

That is large enough to matter in the policy debate that now treats stablecoins as a channel for dollar liquidity rather than a niche crypto instrument.

World Liberty launched USD1 on Sept. 1 25, 2025, and by Christmas Day, it had crossed $3 billion in market capitalization, implying that a sizable portion of its current supply was added in the weeks since.

That pace can amplify both adoption and redemption risk if distribution becomes concentrated in a small set of counterparties.

Stablecoin growth meets policy, reserves and settlement rails

The forward-looking issue for markets and regulators is that stablecoin scale increasingly links to U.S. funding markets and foreign policy incentives.

A November Federal Reserve speech tied stablecoin growth to Treasury demand and potential transmission effects across the financial system, placing reserve composition and redemption mechanics closer to core macro questions than to the usual crypto volatility cycle.

Separately, Citi has published a 2030 framework that sketches stablecoin issuance reaching $1.9 trillion in a base case and $4.0 trillion in a higher-adoption case.

Those numbers, if approached, would pull stablecoin governance into the same category as other large buyers of short-dated sovereign debt.

Barron’s has also reported Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussing a scenario where stablecoins expand toward about $3 trillion by the end of the decade.

That has further focused attention on how issuer compliance and reserve rules shape demand for bills.

Those macro stakes now collide with a narrow set of facts about USD1’s distribution and the identity of potential strategic backers.

U.S. lawmakers have highlighted World Liberty-related records requests tied to a deal in which UAE-backed MGX planned to use USD1 as the settlement asset for a $2 billion investment in Binance.

If replicated, that arrangement would give a single issuer a role in sovereign-linked flow that banks historically controlled through correspondent networks.

For USD1, the near-term watch is whether more state-adjacent entities standardize on the token for settlement and treasury operations, or whether compliance concerns push institutions toward issuers with longer operating histories and clearer supervisory touchpoints.

The regulatory perimeter is also shifting.

The GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, establishes a federal framework that centers reserve, compliance, and operational expectations in stablecoin competition.

As stablecoin rules harden, market share may increasingly track which issuers can meet bank-grade controls without losing the speed and global reach that drove adoption in the first place.

That tradeoff becomes more acute for tokens used in institutional settlement rather than retail trading.

UAE capital, AI compute and political scrutiny

The UAE angle adds a second, non-crypto variable: advanced AI compute.

WSJ reporting has tied the investment narrative to discussions involving access to large volumes of AI chips.

A preliminary framework for the UAE to import up to 500,000 Nvidia AI chips per year was also approved last year

Even without proof of quid pro quo, the sequencing matters because it maps onto a pattern in which capital commitments, payment infrastructure and strategic technology access get negotiated as a bundle across jurisdictions.

For USD1, the measurable path ahead is straightforward even if the politics are not.

If total stablecoins expand and USD1 merely holds its current low-single-digit share, its supply would climb into the high single-digit billions in a broader-market expansion.

If distribution via large venues and state-linked flows deepens, USD1’s share could rise, which would also raise the cost of any confidence event because redemptions would transmit through fewer, larger channels.

Conversely, if counterparties limit exposure during investigations or if banks and payment firms tighten onboarding, supply can contract quickly, with market cap acting as a near-real-time referendum on access to on- and off-ramps.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Tahnoon-linked stake and the alleged $187 million flow to Trump entities have now placed World Liberty’s financing and USD1’s growth under a level of scrutiny that typically arrives only after a stablecoin becomes a routine settlement leg for large, politically exposed transactions.

Based on the Journal's report, we are left with several highly salient questions;

1. Did a foreign royal or state-adjacent network effectively buy influence with Trump (or his family) through a Trump-linked stablecoin company?
2. Was there any quid pro quo, explicit or implicit, linking the UAE-backed investment to U.S. policy decisions (crypto rules, sanctions, defense, diplomacy)?
3. What exactly was the $187 million paid to Trump family entities for, and was it structured to conceal a conflict of interest?
4. Who are the ultimate beneficial owners behind the ~49% stake, and does it grant blocking or veto power over major decisions?
5. Are stablecoin/finance talks being bundled with AI chip access, and did U.S. chip-export decisions align with the timing of the capital commitments?

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