The Abu Dhabi royal sometimes referred to as the “spy sheikh” is a major shareholder backing a new U.S. bank the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture is preparing to launch…Seikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan and co-investors are behind an entity that owns the largest stake—49%—in the holding company that World Liberty Financial created to house its banking venture.
The sheikh in 2025 backed a $500 million investment into World Liberty Financial in exchange for a 49% stake in the company. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in August 2026 granted preliminary conditional approval for World Liberty Financial to launch a federally chartered national trust bank to issue, redeem and safeguard USD1, the dollar-backed stablecoin World Liberty launched in 2025. The new venture marks an expansion of the business relationship between the Trump-backed crypto company and a foreign government official. Tahnoon serves as the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and is brother to the country’s president. He oversees a more than $1.3 trillion empire funded by his personal fortune and state money.
Stablecoins are pegged to the value of real assets held in a reserve. USD1 now has a market value of $4 billion. World Liberty says the dollars backing USD1 are invested in U.S. Treasurys and other cash equivalents, generating an estimated $150 million a year in interest. Previously, World Liberty issued USD1 through BitGo, a separate trust bank that held the stablecoin’s reserves and kept a portion of the interest. The more USD1 in circulation, the more revenue World Liberty can generate from its reserves. World Liberty says it plans for the trust bank to drive “mainstream adoption” of USD1 and to offer new services to clients, such as holding their cryptocurrency for a fee.
World Liberty moved to establish a bank in partnership with its shareholders after the president in July 2025 signed the Genius Act, which allows approved stablecoin companies to directly hold the reserve assets that their coins are fixed against. The shareholder structure of the bank’s holding company, called WLTC Holdings, is the same as World Liberty’s, though Tahnoon and his co-investors used a different entity—called StringZ Holding RSC—for the stake in WLTC. An entity affiliated with the Trump family holds a 38% stake, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The company’s pursuit of a banking license came under scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers after the Journal reported in January that Tahnoon and co-investors had made an undisclosed $500 million investment in the company in January 2025, through an entity called Aryam Investment 1. The deal, signed four days before President Trump’s inauguration, steered $263 million to Trump family entities, according to the president’s most recent financial disclosure. The investment drew sharp criticism from Democrats and legal experts, who said it was unprecedented for a foreign government official to take a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company. Ethics experts said the timing of the new banking venture is significant because the expansion of Trump’s business relationship with a foreign government official is taking place while he is a sitting president—and at a time when his administration was actively negotiating with the U.A.E. over its access to U.S. artificial-intelligence chips.
Excerpt from Rebecca Ballhaus, Trump Family’s New Crypto Bank Is Backed by Abu Dhabi Sheikh, WSJ, Aug. 27, 2026
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