Written by: Eric, Foresight News
On the morning of January 31, Beijing time, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal citing informed sources, four days before Trump's inauguration, a confidant of a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family secretly signed an agreement with the Trump family to acquire 49% of the Trump family's cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial (WIFI) for $500 million.
It was reported that in Aryam's first investment of $250 million, $187 million flowed to two companies owned by the Trump family, while another $31 million went to entities associated with WIFI co-founders Zak Folkman and Chase Herro.
Later, in a video posted by Fox News on X this morning, Trump responded somewhat ambiguously during an interview: "I am not aware; the relevant matters are handled by my son and family members."
The company making the generous investment is called Aryam Investment, which has now become the largest shareholder of WIFI and is the only known investor in the company aside from the founders.
Behind Aryam is Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the chairman of MGX.
The protagonist of the story, Tahnoun, is the son of the UAE's founding father Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan and the younger brother of the current president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, managing $15 trillion in national assets and private funds. With the support of what may be one of the wealthiest families on the planet, MGX, established as a joint venture between the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund and the UAE's most renowned AI technology group G42, is known for its lavish investments and consistent success.
MGX's core mission is "to build AI infrastructure for the global economy," positioning itself as a long-term, strategic capital provider. Investments are primarily focused on three major areas: AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and core AI technologies and applications, with a target asset management scale of $100 billion. By 2025, MGX had already invested $10 billion in the U.S., participating in the $40 billion acquisition of data center Aligned Data Centers, the "Stargate Project" with a total investment target of $500 billion, and financing for AI giants like OpenAI, Databricks, Anthropic, and xAI.
In March 2025, MGX announced a $2 billion investment in Binance, later revealed by CoinDesk to be paid in USD1. If the Wall Street Journal's report is accurate, then MGX's investment in Binance using the USD1 stablecoin issued by WIFI, along with Binance's subsequent launches of high-yield USD1 financial products, makes sense: it is not that MGX is trying to please, but rather that these two companies share common investors. With the combined efforts of the three giants, the issuance of USD1 surged to fifth place in less than a year, surpassing FDUSD and PayPal's PYUSD, only behind Ethena's USDe. If only centralized stablecoins are considered, USD1 ranks just below the two "big brothers," USDT and USDC.
Additionally, MGX recently held about 15% of the equity in TikTok's new U.S. entity as a key non-Chinese shareholder. Thus, the $2 billion investment in Binance and the $500 million investment in WIFI, compared to MGX and Tahnoun's bets on U.S. tech companies, seem relatively small, but the total investment of $2.5 billion occupies two of the top five single financing amounts in the Web3 industry for 2025 and accounts for over 10% of the total industry financing for that year.
Although not as famous as a16z or Paradigm, UAE capital has been heavily investing in Web3 even before MGX was established.
The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund participated in investments in cryptocurrency payment company Ramp and cryptocurrency wallet technology company Dfns, and by May 2025, it already held $400 million worth of BlackRock's Bitcoin spot ETF shares. Cypher Capital, established in Dubai in 2022, has invested in Web3 companies such as Sui, Sei Network, zkPass, Ton, Berachain, Aethir, zkLink, and Jambo in recent years, earning the nickname "Middle East a16z."
There are also Sigma Capital, which established a $100 million fund in early January 2025, and M2 Capital, which invested $20 million in Ethena, among others. The "oil tycoons" have already infiltrated every aspect of Web3.
The UAE has a very inclusive attitude towards crypto and is one of the fastest countries to advance crypto legislation. The Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) is the world's first independent regulatory body specifically for virtual assets, and the Abu Dhabi Global Market was one of the first to launch a comprehensive regulatory sandbox for digital assets. Companies like Tether, Circle, and Ripple have already obtained operational licenses or permits in the UAE. Binance received full regulatory authorization from the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) in December 2025, becoming the first cryptocurrency exchange to obtain a global license under the ADGM framework.
In addition to Binance, the two Chinese-led exchanges OKX and Bybit have also obtained operational licenses from VARA. Kraken and Crypto.com serve as compliant representatives of the U.S. in the UAE. Furthermore, Backpack, which rose to prominence after the collapse of FTX, announced in October 2023 that it had obtained a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license issued by VARA. For these exchanges seeking compliant operations worldwide, the UAE has become a "golden sponsor," providing money, land, and licenses.
When Binance received full authorization from FSRA in December 2025, Fortune magazine reported that Binance had moved its headquarters to Abu Dhabi, a claim that Binance CEO Richard Teng did not deny.
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