Tag Archives: crypto-currency and U.S. sanctions

Balance scale with BANK building and cryptocurrency symbols, including Bitcoin and Ethereum

If This Is Not Sleazy: What Is?

Leave a reply

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

Hands tearing apart a chain made from dollar bills

How A7 Plans to Liberate the Slaves of the West

Leave a reply

Russia’s war effort in Ukraine might be faltering, but the Kremlin has a high-tech superweapon to neutralize Western sanctions. It is called A7. The state-backed payment network moves money in and out of Russia, defying U.S. and European efforts to isolate Moscow from the global banking system. A7 helps Russia pay for everything from military-drone parts to luxury cars to imported fruit, using a mix of cryptocurrency transactions and more-traditional banking methods…Behind its rapid rise is a convicted money launderer. A7’s founder, Ilan Shor, is best known for his role in one of the biggest bank heists in history: a complex scheme to extract $1 billion from three banks in Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, in 2014. A Moldovan court convicted him of fraud and money laundering for helping orchestrate the theft, but he fled the country while under house arrest. Shor has denied the allegations and called them politically motivated…

Founded less than two years ago, A7 says it handles nearly 20% of payments in Russian foreign trade, or more than $100 billion annually. President Vladimir Putin gave it his blessing in 2025, taking part by video link in the opening of an A7 branch office. Now, A7 is planning to take its services global and fulfill Putin’s vision of an alternative financial system outside the control of Washington or Brussels. Having recently opened its first offices abroad, in Nigeria and Zimbabwe, A7 says it is eyeing expansion into Latin America and the Middle East. Executives don’t hide their desire to serve countries seen as pariahs in the West. “Before, the Western system essentially enslaved the whole financial world, allowing the West to flip a switch at any time and stop any country from being able to make payments,” Shor told TASS, the Russian state news agency, in July 2026. “We give companies and countries freedom, because our system is immune to sanctions.” The U.S., U.K. and European Union have all sanctioned A7.

To skirt sanctions, A7 moves money through a network of shell companies in places such as Kyrgyzstan, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Open Source Centre…Crypto is the other main tool that A7 uses, allowing it to bypass banks entirely. A7 backed the 2025 launch of A7A5, a digital token pegged to the value of Russia’s currency, the ruble. Blockchain analysts say A7A5 is used to pay for sanctioned goods by swapping it for U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins, such as Tether. More than $2.2 billion has moved through one such A7A5 swapping service,,,

Excerpt from Alexander Osipovich, Russia’s Hottest Startup Is a State-Backed Sanctions Evasion Network, WSJ, Aug. 7, 2026

Is Iran’s Crypto Economy Safe? Crypto’s Deceitful Name

Leave a reply

Iran’s demand that oil tankers pay transit tolls in cryptocurrency for passing through the Strait of Hormuz has cast a new light on the country’s $7.8 billion crypto economy and the role digital currencies play for regimes operating outside the mainstream financial system…The situation in Iran echoes that of Venezuela, where the stablecoin tether serves as both a tool for the state-run oil industry to circumvent sanctions and a lifeline for everyday people struggling against a devaluing currency, the bolivar.

The paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been among the most active users on Iran’s cryptocurrency market, often straining the country’s scarce electricity resources to mine bitcoin…Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency used by the Iranian regime. The Central Bank of Iran has acquired at least $507 million of tether—the world’s largest stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar—in an apparent bid to prop up the domestic currency and settle international tradet.

In the months leading up to the war, Iranians had increasingly migrated their bitcoin holdings from local crypto exchanges to their personal wallets, fearing state-imposed internet blackouts and financial seizures during domestic protests. And two days after the February 2026 airstrikes, total exchange outflows had reached about 10.3 million.. A 700% surge in outflows from Nobitex, Iran’s largest crypto exchange, within minutes of the initial U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran. The exodus suggests that the people were withdrawing their funds and sending them to overseas crypto exchanges that typically draw tokens from Iranian accounts during moments of instability…. With more than 11 million users, Nobitex is the primary gateway for Iranian citizens to swap rials for tether, which they can convert into other currencies abroad. Last year, a pro-Israel hacking group called “Predatory Sparrow” drained more than $90 million from Nobitex. U.S. regulators have targeted Iran’s digital infrastructure before. In January 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned two U.K.-registered crypto exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, for facilitating approximately $1 billion in transactions linked to the IRGC, according to TRM Labs.

Excerpt from Vicky Ge Huang, Iran’s $7.8 Billion Crypto Economy Finds New Way to Grow After Cease-Fire, WSJ, Apr. 9, 2026