The Bizarre Connection Between Iran Negotiations and Trump's Crypto Firm

[Celerity]

World Liberty Financial has developed close ties to the Pakistani government.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/parkistan-iran-trump-witkoff-world-liberty-financial/



In January, Zach Witkoff sat down at a table in Islamabad and signed a deal with Pakistan’s finance minister. Witkoff is the young CEO of Donald Trump’s crypto finance firm, World Liberty Financial, and the arrangement he struck that day would allow WLF’s stablecoin to be used for Pakistan’s cross-border transactions. It was a hugely consequential moment for World Liberty. Despite Trump’s association and the involvement of his sons, this firm hasn’t exactly lit the blockchain world on fire. The value of the company’s token has plummetted from 31 cents to just 8 cents in recent months. World Liberty could use a deal like this—a government vouching for and endorsing the use of its coin. And the deal was being consummated, standing behind Witkoff was General Asim Munir, the top officer in Pakistan’s army.

The presence of a military leader during this financial meeting was odd. But three months later, Munir is connected to another Witkoff family effort: the ongoing negotiations to settle the war in Iran. Munir has been a frequent visitor to the Trump White House and is a chief architect of Pakistani efforts to mediate an end to the Iran war. That means he’s working with Witkoff’s father, Steve Witkoff, the billionaire New York City real estate developer who Donald Trump appointed to be his Mideast envoy. The elder Witkoff will join Vice President JD Vance and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner at the negotiating table on Saturday, facing off with Iran’s negotiators in talks being brokered by Pakistan.

The Witkoff connection is not a coincidence. It’s another example of how the Trump crew is mixing business—their personal financial business—with US foreign policy. Pakistan’s relationship with the United States has ebbed and flowed over recent decades, and under the Biden administration, it was at a low. But Pakistan has mounted a huge effort to cozy up to Trump. The country nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, and the World Liberty Financial deal appears to be part of the overall effort.

Last month, Bloomberg profiled self-described “crypto bro” Bilal Bin Saqib—one of the key architects of both the deal between World Liberty Financial and the Pakistani government and the newly warmed relationship between Islamabad and the Washington. “Because of crypto, doors have opened,” Saqib told Bloomberg. “New conversations have opened, trust has been built. We have gotten an opportunity to rebrand.” Saqib, who is 35, was named an adviser to World Liberty Financial last year, but he left that post to take a series of increasingly high-profile jobs in the Pakistani government working with crypto. His current position is chair of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, the country’s crypto regulator. Saqib has maintained his close relationship with World Liberty Financial, posting selfies with Zach Witkoff from a Mar-a-Lago get-together a few weeks before the Iran war kicked off.

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[UpInArms]

1. Maybe related to this

Crypto Investor at Center of Trump Corruption Allegations Now Sees Himself as ‘Victim’

Tron founder and crypto investor Justin Sun has accused Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial of misconduct and a general lack of transparency. The early backer of the project previously sat at the heart of pay-to-play allegations involving the Trump administration’s SEC, fueled by his large investments in World Liberty Financial and the TRUMP memecoin.

Sun has zeroed in on two key issues with the project. The first is a backdoor blacklisting function built into the WLFI smart contract that lets the team freeze any holder’s tokens without notice or explanation. The second is a roughly $75 million loan the project’s treasury recently took out by pledging about five billion WLFI governance tokens as collateral on its affiliated DeFi platform Dolomite. The borrowing arrangement has drawn direct comparisons to the way Alameda Research borrowed against FTX’s proprietary FTT token ahead of the exchange’s collapse and eventual bankruptcy.

Sun has called himself the “first and single largest victim” of World Liberty Financial. In September of last year the project blacklisted roughly 545 million of his WLFI tokens after he transferred about $9 million worth amid heavy selling pressure. At the time, Sun posted publicly on X, insisting he was innocent and demanding the tokens be released. In response, World Liberty Financial posted on X, “We do not seek to blacklist anyone. We respond when alerted to malicious or high-risk activity that could harm community members.”

“I denounce the ongoing token scandals by the bad actors at WLFI . . . Every action taken by the WLFI team to extract fees from users, to secretly implant backdoor controls over user assets, to freeze investor funds without disclosure or due process, and to treat the crypto community as a personal ATM — all of these actions are illegitimate and were never authorized by any fair, transparent, or good-faith community governance process,” Sun wrote.

More at link

[Maeve]

2. They know how to make money for themselves while screwing others and expect to be thanked for it

[Hugin]

3. Anyone surprised that there was a grift angle in this sham?

No? Bueller? The guy asleep in the back of class?