How Trump Might Be Cashing In on a Weakening Dollar

Trump’s most outrageous abuse of power involving cybercurrency was to lift national-security restrictions on exports of AI computer chips to the United Arab Emirates two weeks after the UAE acquired $2 billion in World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin, which it then invested in Binance. This was, quite literally, the largest-ever financial transaction involving cryptocurrency. I’m hardly the only person to compare this episode, which The New York Times detailed in an excellent lead story last month, to Teapot Dome. I did so even before Zhao’s pardon enlarged the scandal’s scope.

The Biden administration appears to have had good reason to impose export restrictions on UAE.  According to an October 25 report in The Financial Times, in 2022 UAE gave to the Chinese technology that United States spy agencies believe extended the range of long-range missiles fired from Chinese fighter jets. “American officials,” the FT’sDemetri Sevastopulo reported, “believed the technology … would give Chinese fighters even more time to target American fighters in any war over Taiwan.” Exasperatingly, Sevastopulo failed to connect this to the UAE’s $2 billion purchase of USD1. G42, the UAE company at the center of the FT story, is chaired by the same Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zyaed al-Nahyan who cut the USD1 and AI chips deals. He told the FT its allegations about missile technology were “patently false.”