Author: Eric, Foresight News
Original Title: Middle Eastern Tycoons Become the Largest Financial Backers in the Crypto World
On the morning of January 31, Beijing time, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal citing informed sources, four days before former U.S. President Trump's inauguration, a close associate of an Abu Dhabi royal family member secretly signed an agreement with the Trump family to acquire a 49% stake in the Trump family's crypto project, World Liberty Financial (WIFI), for $500 million.
It was reported that out of Aryam's initial $250 million investment, $187 million went to two companies under the Trump family, while another $31 million flowed to entities associated with WIFI co-founders Zak Folkman and Chase Herro.
Later, in a video posted on X by Fox News this morning, Trump's response to the matter was somewhat vague: "I was not aware of it; related matters were handled by my son and family members."
The report stated that the generous company is named Aryam Investment, and this investment made Aryam the largest shareholder of WIFI and the only known investor aside from the founders.
Behind Aryam stands Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan (hereinafter referred to as Tahnoun), the Chairman of MGX.
The protagonist of the story, Tahnoun, is the son of the founding father of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-nahayan, and the younger brother of the current President, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. He manages $1.5 trillion in national assets and private funds. With the support of what may be one of the wealthiest families on the planet, MGX, a joint venture between the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund and the UAE's most renowned AI technology group, G42, has been making lavish and successful investments.
MGX's core mission is to "build AI infrastructure for the global economy," positioning itself as a long-term, strategic capital provider. Its investments focus on three main areas: AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and AI core technologies and applications, with a target asset management scale of $100 billion. In 2025, MGX already spent hundreds of billions of dollars 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 funding rounds for AI giants such as OpenAI, Databricks, Anthropic, and xAI.
In March 2025, MGX announced a $2 billion investment in Binance, and later CoinDesk revealed that the investment would be paid in the form of USD1. If the facts are as reported by The Wall Street Journal, then MGX's investment in Binance was made using the USD1 stablecoin issued by WIFI, and Binance's subsequent two high-yield USD1 wealth management activities have a reasonable explanation: it was not MGX intentionally currying favor, but rather the two companies share a common investor. Driven by the combined efforts of the three giants, the issuance volume of USD1 surged to fifth place in less than a year, surpassing FDUSD and PayPal's PYUSD, second only to Ethena's USDe. If only centralized stablecoins are considered, USD1 is only behind the "big brothers" USDT and USDC.
Additionally, MGX recently held approximately 15% of the equity in TikTok's new U.S. entity as a key non-Chinese shareholder. From this perspective, the $2 billion investment in Binance and the $500 million investment in WIFI pale in comparison to MGX and Tahnoun's bets on U.S. tech companies. However, the $2.5 billion investment not only secured two spots in the top five single financing rounds in the Web3 industry in 2025 but also accounted for over 10% of the industry's total financing volume for the year.
Although not as well-known as a16z or Paradigm, even before MGX was established, UAE capital had already begun investing heavily in Web3.
The Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund participated in investments in crypto payment company Ramp and crypto wallet technology company Dfns, and as of May 2025, it already held $400 million worth of BlackRock's Bitcoin spot ETF shares. Cypher Capital, founded 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 it the nickname "Middle Eastern a16z."
Additionally, there is Sigma Capital, which established a $100 million fund in early January 2025, and M2 Capital, which invested $20 million in Ethena, among others. "Oil tycoons" have already permeated every aspect of Web3.
The UAE holds a very inclusive attitude toward crypto and is one of the fastest countries to advance crypto legislation. The Dubai Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) is the world's first independent regulatory agency specifically for virtual assets, and the Abu Dhabi Global Market is one of the earliest regulatory sandbox entities to introduce a comprehensive digital asset framework. Companies such as Tether, Circle, and Ripple have already obtained operating permits or licenses in the UAE. Binance, in December 2025, obtained full regulatory authorization from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), becoming the first crypto exchange to receive a global license under the ADGM framework.
In addition to Binance, OKX and Bybit, two exchanges led by Chinese, have obtained operating permits from VARA. Kraken and Crypto.com are the U.S. representatives for compliance in the UAE. Furthermore, Backpack, which rose to prominence after the collapse of FTX, announced as early as October 2023 that it had obtained a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license for trading services from VARA. For these exchanges seeking compliant operations globally, the UAE provides funds, land, and licenses,俨然 taking on the姿态 of a "financial backer."
In December 2025, when Binance obtained full authorization from the FSRA, Fortune magazine reported that Binance had relocated its headquarters to Abu Dhabi. Binance CEO Richard Teng did not deny this.
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