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First, the Crabgrass evaluation is that crypto is nothing but selling a piece of the big blue sky. No nation's promise is backing the "currency," only the market price mechanism, which kept Bankman Fried afloat until it didn't, and he's still in the slammer for years while Zhao only got months, already served, since Binance stayed solvent and operative while paying out a fine of $4 billion - solvent for reasons Crabgrass cannot really comprehend other than market trust still holds, and presumably Binancet tighened its just-say-no to money laundering sloth - with solvency vs investor pain and loss mattering. That's the preamble, so now the story -
MJ from mid-March of this year, for context behind yesterdays' Zhou pardon:
Report: Trump Family May Invest in Crypto Giant Binance as Founder Seeks Pardon
If Trump becomes a Binance investor, he could also be business partners with UAE’s royal family.
Pool via AP The Trump family has allegedly been discussing a possible investment in the crypto exchange Binance—a deal that, especially in light of Binance’s multi-billion-dollar valuation, would raise a host of conflict-of-interest questions. The discussions were first revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, which also reported that Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, is simultaneously seeking a presidential pardon after pleading guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering laws.
Zhao disputed the Journal’s reporting, posting on X Thursday that the paper “got the facts wrong” and that he’d “had no discussions of a Binance US deal with … well, anyone.”
On top of the ethical issues raised by the possible entanglement of executive clemency powers with a lucrative financial transaction, such an investment deal could also turn the Trump family into business partners with a Middle Eastern royal family.
News of the alleged Binance talks comes one day after an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm, MGX Fund Management, announced it is making a $2 billion investment in Binance, securing a minority stake in the exchange. MGX’s chairman is Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan—who is the national security adviser for the United Arab Emirates and brother of the UAE’s current ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Tahnoun bin Zayed is also the chairman of a separate investment firm called G42 Just last year, the Republican-led House Select Committee on China raised concerns over that firm’s close connections with the Chinese government and its possible involvement in the transfer of sensitive American technology to China through a deal it proposed with Microsoft. (Microsoft later added safeguards to the deal in response to congressional concerns.)
Zhao founded Binance in 2017, and it quickly grew to be one of the most important crypto exchanges in the business, alongside Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. In fact, it was a failed merger and personal acrimony between the two companies and their founders that seemed to trigger the collapse of FTX. But Binance ran into its own troubles when, following years of criticism over its security and privacy practices, the company in 2023 was charged with money laundering and sanctions evasion. Among other accusations, the US government charged that the company had helped users evade sanctions against Russia, Iran, and Cuba. A Reuters report found that Korean hacking groups, investment frauds, and drug networks all had used the exchange to move money.
Eventually, the company agreed to a $4 billion fine, and Zhao agreed to resign and personally pay a $50 million fine. He also served four months in prison.
MJ references a WSJ (paywalled) thread -
According to the Journal’s report Thursday, the possibility of bringing on the Trump family as investors was first raised by Binance, and Steve Witkoff, a Trump family friend who was recently named as the US special envoy to the Middle East, has been involved in the discussions. Witkoff has known Trump for decades, and last year his son, Zach Witkoff, founded the Trump-backed World Liberty Financial crypto company. The Journal reported that an administration official denied involvement by Steve Witkoff in any Binance talks.
The Journal reported that one source indicated that Binance may be seeking to follow the path blazed by crypto investor Justin Sun, who was facing a civil fraud investigation by the SEC under the Biden administration. Last fall, Sun invested $75 million into the World Liberty Financial platform—triggering an $18 million payday for Trump. Last month, the SEC announced it was halting its investigation into Sun.
After the Zhao pardon, it seems Trump favors Chinese folks with money routing to him and family, given that the "$18 million payday" link at the end of the last paragraph above fleshes out as -
A Chinese national, charged with fraud by the SEC, just sent Donald Trump $18 million
Chinese Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun paid $6.2 million for a banana — sold by Sotheby's as conceptual art — and then ate it last Friday.
The banana is not Sun's most notable recent purchase.
On November 25, Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, a new crypto venture backed by President-elect Donald Trump. Sun said his company, TRON, was committed to "making America great again."
World Liberty Financial planned to sell $300 million worth of crypto tokens, known as WLF, which would value the new company at $1.5 billion. But, before Sun's $30 million purchase, it appeared to be a bust, with only $22 million in tokens sold. Sun now owns more than 55% of purchased tokens.
Sun's decision to buy $30 million in WLF tokens has direct and immediate financial benefits for Trump. [...]
Feed the trough, get the pardon seems a repeat story, one drolling slime all over the place. The item continues:
A filing by the company in October revealed that "$30 million of initial net protocol revenues" will be "held in a reserve… to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations." After the reserve is met, a company owned by Donald Trump, DT Marks DEFI LLC, will receive "75% of the net protocol revenues."
So before Sun's purchase, Trump was entitled to nothing because the reserve had not been met. But Sun's purchase covered the entire reserve, so now Trump is entitled to 75% of the revenues from all other tokens purchased. As of December 1, there have been $24 million WLF tokens sold, netting Trump $18 million.
Sun is also joining World Liberty Financial as an advisor, making Sun and the incoming president business partners.
While Trump has the cash, Sun's tokens are effectively worthless. To comply with U.S. securities law, WLF tokens are "non-transferable and locked indefinitely in a wallet or smart contract until such time, if ever, [WLF tokens] are unlocked through protocol governance procedures in a fashion that does not contravene applicable law." The only thing that Sun can do with his tokens is participate in the "governance" of World Liberty Financial. Right now, the only thing World Liberty Financial does is sell tokens.
Any foreign national paying an incoming president $18 million weeks before entering the White House should raise red flags. Sun's purchase is even more alarming because the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently prosecuting him for fraud.
[...] Major media outlets obsessed with banana, ignore Sun's payment to Trump
A foreign national under federal fraud prosecution making a purchase that results in $18 million cash payment to the president-elect has all the makings of a major scandal. But it has been virtually ignored by several major media outlets.
The New York Times, for example, has published five articles about Sun's purchase of the banana but none about Sun's $30 million purchase of WLF tokens and his business partnership with Trump. The Washington Post has published three articles about the banana, but its coverage of Sun's purchase of WLF tokens was limited to one short paragraph in a larger editorial about the crypto industry.
So, Trump gets a benefit, while MSM goes bananas.
You decide, what's the more telling story, especially after Zhou got his, Trump-family adventures got theirs, and people voted for the creep, that being the most unfortunate part of any Trump saga. He'd gone casino bust, but propagandized those little red caps.
While having noted US MSM was more enthralled by Mr. Sun and his expensive banana meal we move on to better reporting coverage choosing. The opening image is from BBC coverage =
Trump and sons' stake in crypto firm worth $5bn
Natalie Sherman - BBC NewsThe crypto token backed by the Trump family has started publicly trading, giving the holdings owned by the US president and his sons a value of roughly $5bn (£3.7bn).
The Trumps launched crypto firm World Liberty Financial in the middle of the presidential campaign last year, drawing questions about potential conflicts of interest as he became entangled in an industry he would be poised to regulate.
The company raised money by selling its eponymous digital tokens to investors, who were initially barred from selling.
But investors voted in July to allow early purchasers, not including founders like Trump family, to sell up to 20% of their holdings of the coin, which trades as WLFI.
As of Tuesday, WLFI was trading at around $0.22 on exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase, after sinking roughly 50% since the start of trading on Monday.
While the fall indicates tepid demand, the coin is still trading at a higher price than what many early buyers would have paid initially, putting them in line for profit.
"We're setting a new standard for financial freedom; built on trust, speed, and U.S. values," Eric Trump wrote on social media. "This is a huge moment for the future of money!",
Those fuckers have no shame. First, "trust" may have a lesser role than Eric Trump says, other factors just might be at play, ahd "huge moment for the future of money" is ambiguous whose future money is being sung to the world by the Trump son.
A month ago MSM carried an item beginning -
Digital tokens tied to World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency launched by former President Donald Trump alongside his family during his 2024 campaign, began open trading Monday, quickly generating more than $1 billion in transactions in the first hour, according to CoinMarketCap.
The project has ballooned in value over the past year, buoyed by Trump’s own deregulatory push from the White House and his public championing of the industry’s potential to bolster the U.S. economy. While the token fell rather quickly in the first day of trading, the Wall Street Journal reported the family’s holdings could now be worth as much as $5 billion, rivaling the value of their real estate portfolio. The growth of the cryptocurrency raises questions about whether the Trump family’s growing crypto fortune creates conflicts of interest.
Les Borsai, a government consultant and co-founder of Wave Digital Assets, told Scripps News the dynamic isn’t entirely without precedent. He pointed to previous presidents who carried private business ties into the Oval Office: Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm, and the Kennedy family’s real estate and finance holdings – though blind trusts were ultimately enacted in both cases.
“When you're a business person, or you have business interests coming into the White House, you're always going to have controversy around it,” Borsai told Scripps News. “I would rather have an administration that understands the underlying technologies than someone that doesn't. It could change what the future of finance looks like.”
I don't know wtf Les Borsai is, other than a Trump syncophant, of which Trump seems to find an unending supply, while, ostensibly, draining some swamp or other that he'd preelection he'd drain, and it seems one swamp-tromper after another gets an admin thing or other, or says something about Trump greatness.
The above is a sampling of returned items from a web search = trump family crypto money making conflict interest
Readers can try such a search, or feed it into somebody's LLM hot item, and see what turns up.
The above sampling is in support and explanation of the Zhou pardon, see following post.