(Bloomberg) – World Liberty Financial Inc., one of the Trump family’s crypto ventures, discussed doing business with Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest digital asset exchange.
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It is not clear what stage the discussion has reached or whether it will lead to deals or ventures, said those who asked the lecture not to name it because it is private. Two of them said the conversation included the possibility that Binance would develop a ridiculous cryptocurrency – along with the freedom of the world, where President Donald Trump and his sons began promotions in September. According to the founding documents, Trump receives three-quarters of global freedom’s net revenue.
Additionally, representatives of the Trump family discussed with Binance about acquiring stakes in US arm Binance.us. In a post on Thursday, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said he had not had any discussion about the Binance.us contract. He did not address whether other potential deals were discussed.
Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to a failure to prevent money laundering that allowed criminal groups and terrorist groups, including Hamas, to use Binance. Zhao, known as “CZ,” was released from an intermediate residence in Long Beach, California in September after being sentenced to four months in prison. Binance paid a $4.3 billion fine. Zhao is asking the Trump administration to give him forgiveness, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Three months after leaving Halfway House, hao met with Steve Witkov, co-founder of World Freedom in Abu Dhabi at the Bitcoin Mena 2024 conference. Witkov is the president’s envoy to the Middle East. He is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to stop the fighting that began when Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago.
The details of Witkoff’s meeting with Zhao in December are not clear. According to four people with knowledge of the issue, discussions between the crypto companies they set up have occurred since then. Representatives of World Freedom did not respond to requests for comment.
Witkov did not respond to requests for comment. Management officials responded to questions about the vinanence, saying Witkov was not part of the consultation or negotiations. The official declined to answer questions about the accounts of the December meeting between Witkov and Zhao in Abu Dhabi. Those familiar with the issue said the White House was unaware of Zhao’s potential pardon.
Witkoff says he is in the process of leaving crypto assets and real estate holdings, and has handed over the holdings to his sons to manage potential conflicts of interest. Anna Kelly, deputy press office at the White House, said in response to questions that President Trump placed his assets in a trust managed by his children. “There is no conflict of interest,” she said.
Doing business with Binance would be an escalation of Trump’s involvement in the crypto industry as the Trump administration is currently rewriting regulations affecting Binance and its competitors. Under Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission has put on hold primarily Crypto’s enforcement, including lawsuits against Binance and Zhao. The lawsuit, which was not resolved by Zhao’s guilty plea or Binance’s fine, alleges that the company inappropriately allows customers to use exchanges, mixing investors’ assets with Zhao’s assets and engaged in manipulative transactions.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Zhao is still the controlling shareholder of Binance, with a net worth of $36.9 billion. He resigned as CEO in November 2023 and pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an anti-money laundering program. Richard Teng, who replaced Zhao as CEO, said he was seeing an opportunity for a “fresh reset and reboot” under Trump in February, but he said he had not specified a plan.
Trump recently called Bitcoin a “scam” in 2021. However, during his second presidential election, he reversed the course and appeared at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville in July 2024, vowing to make the United States “planetary crypto capital.” In addition to reducing regulations, his administration has proposed to boost crypto by letting the government own stockpiles of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency.
A few weeks after the Nashville Conference, Trump and his sons began to promote world freedom. It says it is developing a platform for trading in cryptocurrency. “We embrace the future with crypto, leaving us with a slow, obsolete, big bank,” Trump said in a video posted on social media.
World Freedom was founded by two lesser-known entrepreneurs with unusual resumes. They were introduced to Trump by Witcoff, a Florida property developer who plays golf with the president. One of them, Chase Herro, previously sold a weight loss “colon cleansing” and a rich, rich class for $149. He once called himself an “internet dirt bag.”
Trump and his sons promoted global freedom in a Mar-a-Lago live stream in September, but until Trump was elected president, the sale of the cryptocurrency of its ownership was slow. Despite not being allowed to resell to the token, and not being entitled to profit, the company currently sells $300 million global Liberty tokens, according to cryptographic data site Dune Analytics.
According to a document provided by World Liberty, Trump receives 75% of his net revenue, including revenue from token sales, as a commission. Witkov and his sons will receive 12.5%, according to documents that list Trump’s title as “Chief Crypto Advocate.” His sons Eric, Baron and Don Jr. are listed as “Web3 Ambassadors.” (World Freedom is separate from Trump’s Memecoin, and started a few days before he took office. The value of that token has skyrocketed above $70, but has since crashed to around $10.)
The company has hinted at Stablecoin’s plans since October, when organizers praised it in a live stream of X. Stablecoins. Tether Holdings Ltd., the world’s most popular Stablecoin issuer, earns trading fees and collects interest on reserve assets that support the coin. Last year’s profit was $13 billion. Stubcoins are usually traded on exchanges. Binance, which accounts for more than half of all crypto transactions, is one of their biggest markets.
On March 7, during a meeting with White House crypto executives, Trump pledged to support Congressional efforts to “provide certainty for dollar-backed stubcoin regulations.”
The Trump Organization, a family company, said when he first took office in 2017, his business interests would be governed by his business interests and would not be placed in a trust managed by his children, responding to decisions and limiting financial information.
“Obviously there is a huge barrier between having a relationship with us and having a relationship with the government,” Eric Trump told Reuters in December in an interview at the Bitcoin Conference in Abu Dhabi.
Founded in 2017 by Zhao in Shanghai, Binance has left a trajectory of regulators who have flew from country to country, avoiding the establishment of head offices in jurisdictions and condemned the exchange of rules of neglect. It was once popular in the US, but its market share has declined as a result of regulatory issues.
The investigation that led to Zhao’s guilty plea was extensive. The US claimed it downplayed the anti-money laundering rules in order to quickly expand its vinance. Prosecutors said the company allowed a $898 million deal from Iran, which was under US sanctions, and executives were well aware that bad actors were using the exchange. Prosecutors cited a message written by an employee of the Binance Compliance department when they announced their guilty pleas from the company and Zhao.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission called Binance’s compliance program “false” and said it was engaged in a “computing strategy for regulatory arbitration.” The lack of control has allowed terrorist groups, including Hamas, al-Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic jihad, Iraq and Syria in Iraq and Syria, among others, including Iraq and Syria Islamic states, according to the US Treasury Department.
“That intentional failure allowed money to flow through its platform to terrorists, cybercriminals and child abusers,” then Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at the time of the settlement.
Binance says that now there is better control and follows rules from around the world. However, the company is still investigating in some countries. French prosecutors stepped up their money laundering investigation into vinance in January. Nigeria sued Vinance in February, seeking more than $80 billion for what the country claims is economic losses and taxes on its back.
– Support from Eric Schatzker, Ava Benny Morrison and Annie Massa.
(Updated with additional comments starting from the third paragraph)
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