Trump Faces Abu Dhabi Crypto Lawsuit Over $2B USD1 Deal
A Circle shareholder has sued President Donald Trump over two UAE-linked World Liberty Financial deals, alleging they breached the Constitution and cost Circle stablecoin reserve income.
Greenberg v. Trump · No. 26-cv-03686
Key Takeaways
- Challenged deal: $500 million for 49% stake
- MGX settled $2 billion Binance investment in USD1
- Circle reserve income: 95% of Q2 revenue
- Binance invested $100 million in Circle in September
J. Benjamin Greenberg, a former Circle software engineer, filed the derivative suit in federal court in Washington on October 22, CNBC reported.
Two UAE deals, one before the inauguration and one after
The complaint targets two transactions tied to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser. In the first, an entity he backs agreed to pay $500 million for 49% of World Liberty, four days before Trump’s January 2025 inauguration.
In the second, announced in May 2025, MGX, an Abu Dhabi state-backed fund he chairs, used World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance.
Before inauguration
$500 million
Tahnoon-backed entity agrees to buy 49% of World Liberty.
While in office
$2 billion
MGX pays for its Binance stake in USD1.
The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars federal officeholders from accepting benefits from foreign states without the consent of Congress. The first deal was agreed before Trump took office; the second came while he was president.
Besides Trump and World Liberty, the suit names U.S. official Steve Witkoff, the holding companies WLF Holdco and Stablecoin Holdco, and DT Marks DEFI LLC, which reports describe as the vehicle through which the Trump family collects World Liberty revenue. A spokesperson for Witkoff did not immediately respond to CNBC.
What the complaint says the Trump family gained
Greenberg also cites administration decisions he argues helped the Trump family. They include a 2025 Commerce Department approval of advanced Nvidia chip sales to an Abu Dhabi AI company chaired by Tahnoon, and a Treasury bureau’s conditional approval in August 2026 of a World Liberty trust bank co-owned by the Trump family and the UAE government, according to Spectrum News. “He needs to be held accountable,” Greenberg said in a statement.
The defendants reject the allegations. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNBC the case is “frivolous,” described it as a repeat of claims Democrats have made against the president for a decade, and said there are no conflicts of interest. World Liberty spokesperson David Wachsman said the company complies with all U.S. laws and regulations, that the claims are without merit and that it looks forward to resolving them in court.
The injury claim runs through reserve income
Greenberg’s case for harm rests on how stablecoin issuers make money. USD1 and USDC are both designed to stay at $1, so their issuers earn interest on the reserves backing tokens in circulation, not gains on the token price. In the second quarter of 2026, Circle reported $668 million in reserve income out of $701 million in total revenue and reserve income, about 95%, at a reserve return rate of 3.48%.
$2 billion × 3.48% ≈ $70 million a year
Gross reserve income at Circle’s Q2 return rate, before distribution costs and revenue sharing. Illustrative only.
The arithmetic gives a sense of scale, not a damages figure. Circle passes much of its income on to partners: distribution, transaction and other costs totalled $412 million in the second quarter. On the USD1 side, World Liberty’s discosures say BitGo and World Liberty affiliates are entitled to interest from the reserve assets, and that a Trump-affiliated entity holds an indirect economic interest in the business.
The complaint alleges that presidential influence steered demand toward USD1 and away from USDC. To prove the injury, Greenberg will have to show that the $2 billion would otherwise have gone to Circle. Binance was already a USDC channel: in December 2024, the exchange agreed to expand USDC’s availability and adopt it for its corporate treasury. That shows a route existed, not that MGX would have taken it.
Circle did not bring the case
“
Circle did not initiate, direct, authorize, or participate in the filing.
Circle spokesperson, to CNBC
In a derivative suit, a shareholder sues on the company’s behalf when its board has not acted. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23.1 requires the shareholder to describe in detail any request made to the directors, or explain why asking would have been futile. The shareholder must also have owned shares when the challenged transactions occurred, which is where Greenberg’s equity pay as a Circle employee becomes relevant.
Greenberg says he holds about 10,000 Circle shares and did not ask the board to act. He argues a demand would have been futile because Circle’s dependence on regulators and its commercial relationships prevent an impartial decision. Circle’s ties to Binance, the exchange at the centre of the USD1 deal, deepened a month before the filing: on September 22, Circle announced a $100 million equity investment from Binance and a renewed five-year commercial agreement.
Earlier emoluments suits ended without a ruling
| First-term case | Who sued | How it ended |
|---|---|---|
| CREW v. Trump | Watchdog group, with restaurant and hotel competitors | Rulings vacated and case ordered dismissed as moot, January 2021 |
| D.C. and Maryland v. Trump | Attorneys general | Rulings vacated and case ordered dismissed as moot, January 2021 |
| Blumenthal v. Trump | Members of Congress | Lawmakers found to lack standing |
The Supreme Court ended the first two cases days after Trump left office in 2021, before any financial records were turned over and without deciding whether he had violated the clause. Greenberg’s case also rests on competitive harm, but he sues on behalf of a rival company and measures the harm in lost reserve income.
What Greenberg is asking for
He asks the court to declare the deals unconstitutional, bar further violations, order an accounting of foreign-linked benefits and direct private-company defendants to give up gains, to the U.S. Treasury or as the court decides. He also seeks unspecified damages and restitution from the World Liberty defendants. Lawmakers have pursued a separate route, with efforts to bar elected officials from issuing or sponsoring crypto assets.
No court response from the defendants has been reported yet. Before reaching the merits, the court will have to settle a threshold question: whether Greenberg can sue on Circle’s behalf at all.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial or investment advice.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
