Trump, Binance, and Iran

Who had "cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump linked to Iranian money laundering" on their Bingo card? The ties are a bit tenuous, and there is no evidence that Trump had any knowledge of such transactions, but Trump has close financial ties to a cryptocurrency exchange that has admitted being a conduit for illicit funds being sent to Iran, including to accounts controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Financial ties also exist between Trump and several of the Gulf states who are currently suffering retaliatory attacks by Iran. At the center of this financial web is World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency enterprise in which one of Trump's business entities has a majority stake.

This story has a lot of players, and keeping them straight is going to be a challenge. I'm going to try to keep things as simple as possible, but that won't always be easy. The first entity to understand is World Liberty Financial. Trump, along with Steve Witkoff, announced the formation of World Liberty Financial in September 2024. Shortly thereafter, the company released a cryptocurrency called $WLFI. World Liberty Financial's ownership is complex, but the Trump family has the dominant role. Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff — Trump's Middle East envoy and negotiator with Russia, is also involved. In March 2025, World Liberty announced the release of USD1, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. In May 2025, MGX, an Abu Dhabi-state-backed entity, purchased a 49% stake in the company.

Another company with whom it is necessary to be familiar is Binance. Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. For those not familiar with cryptocurrencies, an exchange is used to buy, sell, or exchange cryptocurrencies. For example, someone with an account on Binance might use U.S. dollars to purchase USD1 stablecoin. The money used for the purchase would go to World Liberty Financial, who would bundle it with funds from other purchasers to invest in money market funds, thereby earning interest. Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ. In November 2023, Binance pled guilty to money laundering and paid a $4.3 billion fine. The company had been found to have been used to funnel money to groups that the United States has designated as terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. CZ also pled guilty to money laundering charges and was sentenced to four months in prison. He also agreed to step down as Binance's CEO, though he remained the company's biggest investor.

Trump's ties to Binance first came to light in March 2025 when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family had held talks with Binance about taking an ownership stake in the exchange. This was after the company had pled guilty to money laundering. Then, in August 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that Binance was administering the trading platform used by World Liberty Financial to trade coins that it issued.

At the same time that MGX, the Abu Dhabi state-owned company, purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the company announced that it would invest $2 billion in Binance using USD1 to finance the transaction. Not only was this a huge influx of cash for Binance, but for World Liberty as well. The $2 billion would end up with World Liberty for it to invest. Binance began offering a range of promotions to encourage additional purchases of USD1. According to the New York Times, 85 percent of USD1 coins now in circulation are held in Binance accounts.

During this period of increasingly close ties between World Liberty Financial and Binance, CZ was lobbying for a pardon. In October 2025, Trump granted the pardon, though he would later claim that, despite their financial dealings, he didn't know Changpeng Zhao. This suggests that Trump was either lying or was granting pardons without knowing who they were for. Moreover, as we would later learn, at the time Trump granted the pardon, Binance was again being used by Iran for money laundering.

I will emphasize again that the cryptocurrency world is complex. Cryptocurrency is stored in wallets. Transactions often occur on a blockchain, making the transactions traceable. Binance has worked with a number of vendor companies who provide various services and often act as middlemen for transactions. As a result, there are a lot of moving parts.

Depending upon which story you believe, in early 2025 either U.S. and/or Israeli investigators alerted Binance to suspicious transactions or internal Binance investigators discovered them on their own. Either way, what was discovered was that Iranian entities and individuals were using Binance to avoid sanctions. According to the New York Times, "People in Iran had gained access to more than 1,500 accounts on the Binance platform over the previous year." In addition, as reported by Fortune:

a VIP account on Binance registered to a 79-year-old Chinese resident used a series of transfers to send $439 million worth of digital tokens from the crypto exchange to an outside wallet. That wallet in turn forwarded most of the funds to ones that company investigators would later identify as connected to sanctioned organizations linked to Iran like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Binance's investigators reported the suspicious transactions to management and were subsequently fired. Replacement investigators were also fired. Binance claims that the employees were not fired because of the investigations, but due to violations of other company policies. Moreover, Binance argues that the investigations were not halted, but still continued. In addition to Fortune, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have reported on the Iranian transactions and the firing of the Binance investigators. Binance has sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation.

Attention eventually focused on two companies tied to Binance. One was Blessed Trust, which the New York Times describes as:

Blessed Trust operated as a so-called fiat partner to Binance, providing a range of services including payments, the documents said. In a message reviewed by The Times, Blessed Trust listed its top five customers by revenue. All of them were Binance entities.

The Times also says that "investigators discovered $1.2 billion in crypto had flowed from Blessed Trust’s Binance account to Iranian-linked entities," including "crypto wallets controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”

The second company was Hexa Whale Trading, registered in Hong Kong in 2024. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Hexa had provided false documentation to open an account at Binance, which was flagged internally at the time, according to documents. Still, Binance allowed Hexa to open an account and gave it VIP client status, which reduces a user’s trading fees.

The Wall Street Journal further reports that Binance's investigators found that the Hexa account had been used to move about $500 million worth of stablecoin to Iran-linked accounts.

Key points here are that Binance closed the Iranian accounts on its exchange and also closed the Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale Trading accounts. However, those closures came months after their ties to Iran were discovered and after the original investigators were fired. Trump pardoned CZ in the middle of the investigations and, while the investigations were going on, Trump's company was establishing close ties to Binance.

Last month, Senate Democrats led by Senator Richard Blumenthal announced an investigation into "the flow of $1.7 billion in crypto from Binance accounts to entities tied to Iran." Two days ago, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it too would investigate the use of Binance by Iran to avoid sanctions.

To sum things up, Trump and Steve Witkoff established a company largely run by their sons — even Barron Trump is listed as the company's "DeFi (decentralized finance) visionary". An entity controlled by Abu Dhabi then purchased 49% of it and invested $2 billion in Binance, which resulted in a windfall for the Trump/Witkoff company. Binance established ties to World Liberty and heavily promoted its USD1 stablecoin, channelling more money to Trump and Witkoff. Meanwhile, Binance was being used to funnel more than $1 billion to Iran. After the Iran money laundering was discovered, Trump pardoned Binance’s founder and majority investor.

It is entirely possible that weapons purchased with money laundered through Trump's financial partner are now being fired at U.S. troops or, even more likely, Abu Dhabi — the source of much of Trump's funding. Trump is completely compromised as Commander in Chief during the war with Iran given his multiple conflicts of interest. Due to the complete politicalization of the Department of Justice, it is unlikely that its investigation will go anywhere, but the Senate investigation could turn up some interesting results.