The Wolf Of All Streets - Trump in Talks to Buy Binance US Stake? CZ Says No. | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

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Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every day on X at 10, 15 a.m. ish. I guess we'll call it 10, 19 a.m. by the time we actually start talking. Five days a week, Monday through Friday, where we unpack all the biggest stories in the crypto industry and market with a panel of incredible, incredible guests who give us their expert insight on everything that is happening. I should say it's honestly, you know, we I do this basically for fun. It's a just an incredible show and keeps me accountable for keeping up with the industry, obviously, to write a newsletter in the morning and do YouTube and then show up for crypto

town hall and try to keep up with these amazing guests and to glean as much knowledge from them as humanly possible. And it's an honor to be able to do that every single day. We have so much news on a daily basis in this industry that it's almost impossible to keep up, almost impossible from hour to hour to decide what the topic of the show will be, which is why it's always so sort of a winding and, and we go from topic to topic to topic and story, often even getting breaking news while we're doing the show. I think the biggest breaking news story right now is the one that we have in the title right now, Trump's family and talks to buy by that US state. There was a Wall Street Journal article today that says, representative of presidents Trump's family have helped talks to take a financial stake

in the US arm of crypto exchange Binance. CZ has been pushing for the Trump administration to grant him a pardon. This is pretty wild. Coming on the heels of the announcement yesterday that now I'm going to butcher it. It's MG something. Anybody here the company owned by the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund that invested 2 billion dollars, it was announced I think yesterday, into Binance. Absolutely huge investment, largest in the history of the crypto space and paid in stable coins.

So NGX investing $2 billion yesterday are being announced. They're owned by the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund, leading many to wonder why Binance would take this. It has to be strategic, obviously, since we know that Binance is flush with cash. And now this story, although I don't think that this is breaking as of anything that happened yesterday, but that the Trump family interested in potentially a stake in Binance, specifically US. Interestingly, also on Tuesday, Dave, who's up here, hosted the show for me. And the reason I missed the show was because I was interviewing Richard Tang, the CEO

of Binance for my podcast, which will come out, I think, a week from Sunday. And I asked him about the idea of them either going public or taking investment, and he shrugged it off because the news hadn't come out. And I asked him about plans in the US, and he shrugged it off and said, we don't have a firm plan right now. We're just seeing how the wind blows. So wondering if this is old news or new. But I guess we should start with first, what would it mean if Trump and his family via either a personal investment or World Liberty Financial were to make an investment in Binance on the heels of CZ obviously coming out of jail and by dance, you know, being charged and paying a over $4 billion fine. Dave, what are your thoughts?

I hope it doesn't happen is all I can say, not because it's necessarily objectively bad. But because anytime the word Trump gets mixed up with anything these days, it creates hysteria in half the population. And honestly, I think that let crypto build, right? You know, let the stable coin bill get done without the meddling of the banking industry, which is the other story you could have talked about today, by the way, because that's going on right now.

And let market structure bill happen where cooler heads can prevail as opposed to making it hyper partisan because Trump owns a stake in one of the players. And the Chinese player at that. Although I think technically they're from Malta now right but I think you know- stake in the largest- exchange out out of China with obviously I think cause a stir to a great degree I mean we we kind of talked about it yesterday, but what do you make of the MGX investment of $2 billion into Binance in general?

To me, that has to be strategic, as I said, right? That's not about Binance needing $2 billion. So clearly, I mean, potentially a listing, a public listing in the United Arab Emirates. I mean, what else do you think could be the angle there? ADX. Oh, MDX. Yeah, ADX.

ADX, Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange or the local Nasdaq. I'm saying that the company that made the investment is MDX. But yes, ADX would be where it would be listed. But do you think that that's the angle that they're going for here? Do you think that that's why they're taking a $2 billion investment? My personal. In fact, sorry, I'm not sure if I was. Go ahead, Vash.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's a 10-year or a decade long ambition of UAE in general and Abu Dhabi a decade long ambition of UAE in general and Abu Dhabi is trying to win the finance game above all the Emirates through ADX and Phoenix, the multi-billion miner, if you remember, got a lot of strategic partnership with the government. They got a $2 billion investment in a nuclear power plant dedicated to just mining operations. Then another billion dollars in hardware was already checked to Antminer Bitmain. Just to give you a reference on how eager and how strongly Abu Dhabi in particular and UAE is heading towards crypto public listings. Eventually, what happened with all these investments and strategic

partnership was that Phoenix went live on ADX as the world's, I mean, not world's, UAE's first company that went public. I think raised about a billion Dirhams or something like that. And then went to, I think a peak of 4 billion. And my numbers are not that good on this, but I'm just giving you references here. Now imagine if UAE would have to play a mega, a mega game of bringing the world capital to ADX. What would you do?

If the world is chasing crypto and the future of economy and everything through crypto, if you could get Binance, the leading exchange with all those hundreds of millions of users to be listed in ADX before it gets to NASDAQ or before it gets anywhere, you win the game. You bring all the liquidity of the world to ADX. I know that sounds pretty dramatic, especially coming from me, but I don't see a smaller play than that. And Binance already has, by the way, for those who come to Satoshi round table, they might have met the investors and partners of local

partners of Binance, they're already like pretty royal, let's put it that way. Yeah. I, in my interview with Richard Tang, I was shocked. I guess I'd never looked into it, that Binance has 260 million registered users. It's just astoundingly huge number. On the website. Yeah.

Yup. I mean, I just never thought about the numbers of registered users, but just astounding. So obviously, as you said, that would be key for them to be listed there in the stock exchange. But I guess the question isn't as to why Abu Dhabi would want Binance. I guess what I'm asking is why would Binance take the money

if they don't need it? And is it strategic for them to list in Abu Dhabi rather than any other jurisdiction in the world? strategic for them to list in Abu Dhabi rather than any other jurisdiction in the world? Yeah, because for the last, I think, 30 years, UAE has been snatching or trying to snatch the world capital model, like the world capital centers like Singapore, like Mauritius, the Asian centers, and then of course, aiming and ambitiously aiming to also snatch more volume and capital from European centers. But what you see today is that some of the largest funds and also a ton of others in numbers have their feeders in UAE, which means if Binance goes public, there will be a ton of institutional

capital that would want to buy that share or that stock because that would be their best exposure into crypto. The most profitable, the most institutional, the most, I mean, the biggest company in crypto, like what's your best shot by the biggest company in crypto over a stock exchange. So no crypto exposure, no nothing. You dabble into crypto, but you don't, and you still get the most stable and biggest company. So I think that would be a strategic angle to target global capital. Scott, I think it's bigger than that. And I know that that's kind of a strange thing to say, but if you believe Larry Fink is right,

and since I said it five years before Larry, obviously I do, that every asset is going to be tokenized. If you understand that the majority, that the most of the volume of trading volume in the world is derivatives, and Binance has arguably the largest derivative platform in the world or damn close to it in terms of volume. The fact that it's crypto is immaterial. You understand that there is the possibility of a strategic tie up that this is a toe in

the water towards where Binance is the derivative platform and Abu Dhabi is listing the stocks and all stocks are multi-jurisdictional listed if they're serious multinational companies. But understand that the potential here, if you're Binance, you need to get into the traditional financial markets if you want to be able to expand into the future. And they know this. And I haven't seen your interview with Richard, but my guess is that might have come out or probably should have

But I think that that's kind of important and people and the same things are gonna be happening You're gonna see every exchange group you think nasdaq going 24 hours is only about us equities Then you're not paying attention. I haven't talked to towel I know him and I know how smart he is to tell Cohen who's the one who made the announcement But there's a lot going on here and ultimately this, this is the sorts of moves that you're going to see more and more of and they'll start increasing over the next few years. I think it's got a little bit even more personal, you know, if I'm sitting in the room there, and, you know, you're kind of wondering, it's the same reason why, you know, BlackRock has a 5% stake

in strategy. Right? Like, Binance could be holding the most Bitcoin in the world. We don't actually all know. It also could be one of the most profitable and largest companies in the world. We don't exactly all know. It's a lot of private money that's kind of floating around. So it could be one of the largest companies in the world. And then if I'm sitting in the room there, the conversation was probably like,

hey, you've been able to operate over here and CZ's kind of lived over there and they don't need the money, but I'm sure it was like, hey, you're taking this money, we're still gonna give it to you, but we want a piece of this thing that you've been building over here with kind of like the blanket of safety,

regulatory safety that we've given you. I would guess that that would kind of like the blanket of safety, regulatory safety that we've given you. Right? I would guess that that would also be a big piece of it, which is totally fine. And I think, you know, they're probably coming and saying, Hey, we want our piece of this before, you know, now that the the rails are off, and the regulation is more friendly in the US and things are really going to go. At some point, the finance did did disclose their true valuation and go public, this investment even though probably could be probably small, I'm guessing less than a 5 percent stake or somewhere in that range.

Yeah, that's what I want to know. Right. We don't know, but I'm guessing somewhere there, that 2 billion instantly turns into like 20. So I think there's probably something there. Then I think it's the same thing with Binance US, right? Like, I don't know if you get like, I don't know where Binance US is actually like based. But there was a, you know, if you've been paying attention in the industry for a while, you know that there was just kind of these wonky setups, capital structures for, you

know, Binance US to Binance or OKX to OKCode. They're different companies. Yeah. Presumably, FTX obviously wasn't. Right. Yeah. They're just like, whatever. Move fast and break everything. But I think it's a similar thing there. Now, do I wish the Trump family, like they've said, was the one that was going after that? Yeah, probably. I'm in the same camp as him. Like, you know, maybe take a step back or at least do it under a different name, right? Like just figure something out. So it's just not as volatile. It's like nice to see the volatility coming out of the market a little bit today, yesterday. So, you know, I

don't think that's a great strategic thing. But, you know, what are we going to do? You know, you can't have everyone in that person's family not try to go after what they're going after. And I think it's actually a great strategic buy, right? And then there's, you know, there's the reciprocity from the larger corporation that they can have and who knows how much Bitcoin they have. Right. So I think that it's the same type of thing. It makes a lot of sense.

Simon. Yeah. Um, this is actually, I believe an incredible move for kind for what was trying to be built all along, which was the whole concept of that security token. But now you have the largest interests in the world competing to try and be the future issuer of the dollar through stablecoins. And at the same time, when you have acquisitions like this, the 260 million users, if we remember back to the DOJ hostile takeover, I call it, the condition of the settlement was pay $4.7 billion or something along those lines. CZ, you'll only get four months in

prison, but you have to install the US Compliance Department. And then Binance started being used as a tool and weapon where accounts were being closed down based upon government goals. And at that point, it was a play for the 260 million users. And at that point, it was a play for the 260 million users. So now come Abu Dhabi. This is a leapfrog moment for a new capital market that has been building in the UAE, a crypto-friendly stroke tax neutral environment, whereby you can have all the foundation

of a very large crypto native database that also has a peer-to-peer fiat currency system whereby you can clear direct from one bank to the other with significant traction. And if you try to turn that into a tokenized exchange with real world assets and traditional securities, as well as a stable structure in the US for stable coins, then I think you have the making of a leapfrog capital market that I think would be a very large battle for who can dominate that industry between Abu Dhabi and America. And eventually, it will probably be the stable coins that will build all those rails to connect it. But this whole vision of global markets where you can send, rather than just listing on NASDAQ or the Tokyo Stock Exchange or the Shanghai Stock

Exchange, the ability for securities to go from exchange to exchange, I think this is a big vision and a big leapfrog towards moving in that type of environment and then Binance is the perfect acquisition or investment or strategic investment for any jurisdiction that wants to pull forward that vision. Bruce, I remember a time when you were here every day, man. Where have you been? See, I gave a great introduction there for Bruce Fett and he didn't even answer. Super awkward.

I love it. That's what makes this show so good. Is that I can like totally hype man and just get left hanging. Totally. Bruce is the perfect one to talk to this. I know. Yeah. Bruce, can you hear us? For some reason, I don't hear Bruce. Do you guys? Because it says he's got a shot. Even shown him as a speaker for me. Okay, Bruce, I'm going to drop you down and send you an invite or just close out and request, okay? If you can hear us, I'll try. Yeah, Bruce is the perfect person for this.

So would love to have that conversation with, oh, you know what? I think I literally just booted him from the space. I'm the worst. I don't know what's happening, but if anybody on the team is listening, get Bruce up here. All right, anyone else thoughts

on what Simon had to say there? Just real quick, we've been talking about this for a long time in this space where, and I know Coinbase is like, oh, we'll never have a coin, we'll never have a token. But now there's a world where, hey, maybe we tokenize the stock and we have it on our exchange. We talked about this early on where, hey, is there an up and coming tech company that traditionally would have went public on the NASDAQ or potentially the New York Stock Exchange that says, hey, we're just going to tokenize and we're going to go public on Coinbase?

What would the liquidity look like there versus other places? What would be the advantage there versus other places? I think right now it's scary. Previously, it's been more scary to say, hey, we're going to go public as a token for regulatory reasons, obviously, and then is there enough liquidity there? Then there's like, hey, you can halt a stock on the New York Stock Exchange. You can't hold something out of DAX. So I think that's always been a scary thing for people after what happened with FDX and it's market making that took down

Terra Luna. It wasn't just bad technology, it was market making. And so I think that's always been a scare. But if you have finance liquidity, Coinbase liquidity, Cracking liquidity, all working together, I think now it opens the door for companies to say, hey, we're just going to go tokenize and we're going to get access, you know, the entire world as our tam, you know, versus just this one exchange. And I think that that is something that will be advertising for companies. Hopefully this this year, if people can pull it off. Bruce, can you hear us? Yeah, can you hear me? Oh, it's a miracle. I

gave you a great like really flattering introduction. I said we missed you. It used to be here at the beginning, and then it was just crickets. Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, it's weird. Maybe you're being suppressed. I couldn't find the channel after I dropped out. Oh, no, I accidentally tried to take you down,

and I think I removed you from the space and had to literally call the team to unban you. So that was my fault. Oh, I got banned. Godspeed, my friend. I don't know. It said remove from spaces. I thought that meant to just dropban you. So that was my fault. Godspeed my friend. I don't know, it said remove from spaces. I thought that meant to just drop you off. Apparently I'm a boomer.

But we were in the glitch there. So your thoughts, Bruce. Well, you know, I want to be careful what I say because I'm friends with a lot of the folks involved and you know, confidentiality wise and everything. But you know, I'll say that, you know, to echo some of the things Simon said, you know, I think that, you know, I think Binance is a great, great brand. You know, I love what Abu Dhabi is doing. And, and the UAE, you know, I was one of the first to, I was the first really, I was the first person ever to talk to the government

in UAE, any government official, talk to the official government advisors way back. And I also was the first person to ever host a crypto event was the Dubai Bitcoin Conference in 2013 in UAE. So all these crazy conferences, maybe I take some tiny bit of blame for that. Because now it's as though, as you know, I know you've been there.

I've been there when you're there. The conference scene in UAE, especially Dubai is pretty. Literally, I saw you on three yachts in less than six hours at Tokyo 2049 Dubai last year. If people want to know how crazy it is. It is a funny thing.

I was thinking about that when I was on one of the yachts a few weeks ago when I was out there. I'm like, this used to just dazzle me. because it's not a normal thing for people to go on big nice yachts. Where I am at the Bay in New Hampshire, the biggest yacht we have is the size of a tender of the yachts that are in Dubai Harbor and Abu Dhabi. It's kind of overwhelming. It's a little bit of, especially Dubai, it's a little bit of like, noise to signal ratio. There's just a lot going on,

a lot of people at these events, it can get kind of exhausting and funny. I mean, talk about a first world problem, like you get tired of going on the yachts, but there is some truth to it. And especially like the fatigue, the size of the conferences and everything. But the point is, it's a good market. I mean, it's attracted tens of thousands of really good people. The Satoshi Roundtable had ridiculous staff. We've had something like 250 people from the Roundtable get a golden visa, which we only have hundreds of attendees. It's like a huge percentage of people. Our first event that we did in Dubai was three years ago. There were 70 people who had never ever been to Dubai who ended up getting a golden visa. So, it's literally 70 people. These are all

like pretty much OGs, a lot of CEOs, founders, ultra high net worth people, people who've been in the space a long time. 70 of them never even set foot in this country before. They liked it so much that they decided to move there and get a visa there. So it really has done a good job at attracting people. I think that it's a good market. I think the things that have succeeded most in UAE are free market solutions. I think they've made some mistakes with some of the regulatory, trying to be too much like the US. There is some, some bureaucrats just like there is in every

other country, but overall, I think it's been a bullish thing. So I'm bullish on UAE and any country that tries to welcome people. And it's particularly interesting where, Binance being the biggest player in the space, they felt welcome there and CZ felt welcome there because it's a very pro-business, pro-innovation kind of culture. But Bruce, do you agree that the angle, I mean, Binance obviously doesn't need money. I think we've established that, right? So they took $2 billion in stable coins from MGX, which is owned obviously by the Sovereign Well Fund of Abu Dhabi. I mean, do you think that that eventually means, as we were talking about,

that they're getting listed there? I mean, what's the strategy there? What's in that, I guess, for Binance? We I think we obviously understand what's in that for the UAE or for Abu Dhabi. Yeah, I'd rather not speculate too much. You know, just like I say, I'm real close with a lot of the, you know, friends. I'll call it foreign. It's not a listing on the legacy exchange, it's a design of a future exchange. Bruce, I can take you even further than that. I think your first interaction with the representative of financial markets here in Dubai was in 2008 in a hedge fund conference in

Montreal where they had a DI.I.F.C. representative there. And I happened to be part of that conversation. I was a student back then, so I was pretty impressed about the exchange. So that's why I remember it. And since that time, in 2008, 2007, where D.I.F.C. was going around and pitching all around the world, the vision of what they're trying to do and And seeing it today really actually happen on the rails of decentralization, on the rails that I participated in personally, et cetera. It's really amazing.

And I think the little, from a strategic orientation, I think that, or I assume that what the UAE in general is trying to do is really, as Simon said, leapfrog into global financial markets. What will accelerate that is the ability to issue emerging market stablecoins, because that's what's going to make this place truly global, is the fact that you can transact in any currency, the denominator is stablecoin issued in any currency, because that will give the world access to financial markets via a

marketplace, which is the UAE, where I think the conversation in the US is very much focused on, obviously, the US dollars and the US assets, etc. because it's the player in global financial markets. But I think the UAE, and this is something that the UAE really understands is that the people, the world comes here and comes here with its diversity, with its needs, et cetera, and tries to create markets that they were unable to create back

home, which gives this place this accelerated type of pace. So this is, I think, very exciting. It's exactly like you said, Simon, I think it's going to be it's a really leaf frog moment that will because because the UAE has had a little bit of a hard time kind of competing with traditional already established financial markets with London, with New York, etc. But given these new rails and the capabilities that stable coins, especially emerging market kind of denominated, you know, Nera and other emerging market stable coins, being able to do things with that here in the UAE is going to be fantastic and is going to really

create a truly smart. Yeah, I agree. I remember that in 2008. I remember when they were pushing the DIFC. I first went to the DIFC when it was first built in 2004. There's a really cool video on YouTube. If you Google like Bruce Fenton, D-I-F-C, I have a video from like almost 20 years ago, and it was just the D-I-F-C building.

And I love showing the video because I like do a panorama. I like move my camera 360, showing some of the cranes and stuff, and there's like nothing there. It's just the building. They were smart. They did, it's like you build it, if you build it, they will come. So they built the

building. And there was nothing. I mean, there was nothing. The car, the floors were cardboard, you know, so they just built this thing. And they're like, Oh, hey, this is a new financial center. And it really wasn't, but it's sort of almost fake it till you make it. They got Goldman Sachs as a tenant, which was a big deal. They started doing, you know, different licensing and getting inviting people in they used, you. They used its own special law system and everything and then it grew. They were pushing that all through 2005, 6, 7, 8, 9,

and then they started building it and more and more things came in. There's a whole bunch of books about this and everything, but they were really friendly and they were innovative and they were really early and they had they were innovative. And they were they were really early on, on interest in Bitcoin. You know, Sheikh Mohammed's office talked to us about Bitcoin in 2013, maybe even 2012, definitely 13, which is pretty early, especially for a government, you know, most governments didn't even look at it until later. And I remember my first meeting in there. I said, Hey, there's this new thing called Bitcoin. And it's like money that you can move. And you know, the old day kind of classic pitch where you you do a demo,

hey, pull out your phone, I'll send you some money right now. And, and, and the first thing the regulators said, they said, Oh, this is really cool. How can we help you? And I'm like, Are you serious? Like, that's what youS. regulators are like, oh, why is this illegal and how can we screw you? You know, so they had a very positive pro innovation and I always urge them to keep that. The other thing they're doing that Zilliener said is like they're alluded to is that they're flexing their money. You know, I used to be in raising private equity from the big funds and I would always urge them from a, from a, you know, sort of Middle East standpoint, I'm like, you ought to use some of that flex to force companies

to invest more direct investment. You know, if you're giving them billions and billions, you should make them have a headquarters and make them bring some of their tech. And they've done that successfully for the last several years. So they've really transformed the economy that way as well. Yeah, and that's exactly what I started with. And just a quick one, in this whatever this move that the UAE is doing right now is going to open the floodgate from a Saudi competition. So you will see Saudi making a move on another player, probably the number two, okay, but you will see something happening from a Saudi perspective very, very, very soon. Which is good, but number one is of course number one and Bruce too, yeah, Bruce to just add to

your point, that's exactly what I was saying that, you know, it took about 20 years of deliberations for ADGM to get the kind of bilaterals, like the structured bilaterals that even some of the top nations don't work so hard to get. The tax structures are super sorted for institutions within ADGM and the IFC, of course, it's a space by itself, like you said. So with all of that, if you list the number one crypto company with the number one asset book as well as the one holding, and let's not even talk about the power it holds in the space, then you definitely get everyone and anyone who's interested into crypto by that asset.

Right? It's like owning the future NASDAQ or something. I mean, maybe CME. Yeah, exactly. Just wanted to say quickly, I just thought too, I just shared the tweet above. CZs basically debunked the entire idea that the Trump family was in talks to buy Biden its US stake saying that the Wall Street Journal got all the facts wrong. This is the Wall Street Journal, hence why we made it the title. You can read it above, but he said that they asked hundreds of people to have 20 people reach out to him. In essence,

they tried hard to make a story to report in all bold. He said, in fact, I have had no discussions of a Binance USD with … well, anyone. So perhaps my conversation with Richard Tang on Tuesday was quite accurate. Yeah, and then we can't complain because there was no pump and there was no dump. But this really is best done in a tax neutral environment to be like the central clearinghouse of tokenized securities and assets and onboarding and offboarding into peer to peer fiat currency rails and all that stuff. If they pull off this vision, I cannot tell you how much of a radical shift in capital markets this could actually have. And,

you know, I too actually, Bruce, I didn't that my first job in job interview in capital markets was a DFC. And I remember going there, if you ever want to suit in Dubai, it's not fun. And it's empty building with like absolutely no infrastructure, but this amazing, amazing looking building. And I took a job at London Stock Exchange instead. Maybe I should have stayed. Aren't they building a crypto building now?

Crypto specific building in Dubai. Yeah, that's CZ's project. But that's a private building. CZ has nothing to do with that. No, but where are they building it? Where are they building it? It's in private building. No, CZ has nothing to do with that. No, but having where are they building it? No, CZ. Where are they building it? It's in DMCC.

It's a DMCC L corridor. It's another guy. It's a media guy stepping into a nice step into it. But that's a pretty pretty solid building. So what is that location? If any jurisdictions are listening to this, this is a massive, massive lesson in lost opportunity. So I was with, I was at the conference when CZ, in the Chondu conference when he launched the BNB token, he just left OKX. And he got hell from, you know, the Chinese government, it started there. And then he had to flee to Japan, and then he got held from the Japanese government and got chased out there. And then we know exactly what happened in the US. So under the Biden administration, they completely tried to wipe the thing out.

But just due to jurisdiction's short vision of him trying to create this global market. It couldn't work in China, it couldn't work in Japan, it couldn't work in America. But now, Abu Dhabi is just the perfect place for something to work in the center of the world. And I do genuinely believe that if this goes the way we think it's going to go, this would be a massive shift in global capital markets and it's a really big bet and actually a no-brainer asymmetric bet for them to make with their sovereign wealth from the vast resources that

they have. It's actually a really strategic. This is the definition of a sovereign wealth and strategic investments. DC. Yeah, I mean, I think Simon, he framed it really, really well there. I just think that it's this kind of a really, really, really upfront move, kind of aligned beautifully with the economic headwinds that are facing down the West. I think one of the things, to go back to the point earlier, I was really surprised to see

this kind of news article come up. I think it was last year, right, that there was negotiations about the idea, you know, involving CZ when it was, you know, offered to the Trump family. Then apparently it seemed like a little bit of a regurgitation of that. But I think it's when you look at it from the point of view of what it's done, I think it's just showcased why Binance is just that biggest brand, right? You've got the brand, you've got the user base, you've got the UAE that are just kind

of completely open-armed welcoming this, where you've got policy issues, everything from MECA across Europe, everything that you look into, the policy changes that are now happening in the US. I think this is just a brilliant flex to have that kind of investment, to open those doors, to embrace cryptocurrency properly. Because I think also the timing of this, if we look at it, the idea of Trump being the US's first pro crypto president coming in, bringing all this prosperity to the US. I think what the UAE is saying is that we already have this environment.

You can come in, you're welcome here with open arms. You can do everything here. You're not facing necessarily the same regulatory battles. But I also think that it kind of puts this really big open road call to everybody else now that says, you know, these guys are investing. And one of the other speakers said this brilliantly earlier, I think maybe Dave, but you're opening this up now. What are Saudi thinking about kind of jumping on this brilliantly earlier, I think maybe Dave, but you're opening this up now. What are Saudi thinking about kind of jumping on this bandwagon? How appealing is everything looking UAE-wise versus kind of the very sticky financial environment

that we're finding ourselves here, like for me, for example, in Europe, but also as well with the US? Mateo. Yeah, when I look at this, I see the MGX investment as kind of a reflexive response to the end of Operation Chokepoint and the policy change in the US, where there's now actually a threat that all of these companies that onshore into this regulatory,

liquidity-friendly environment could start to see an advantage and a gain in coming back to the US because there's now much more of like a clear landing pad for this. And just to kind of go back to CZ's tweet, I think what he's really saying there is that he had no involvement. I don't think it necessarily dictates there has been no involvement. I agree with Dave that it would almost be extremely on brand for Trump or some affiliate of his companies to make this decision, but I don't think it's ideal for the industry or for CZ.

But I think what we are experiencing here is there probably is finance plans to expand its capital market strategy. It's looking and shopping around what are the best solutions for that. Obviously the idea probably here is that Binance itself as a global company can receive this investment from UAE, be able to manage the capital market strategy, upgrade the financial system there, build the liquidity rails, as Simon said. But then we have Binance US, which has been kind of the redheaded stepchild of Binance that's looking to maybe do something similar or expand its efforts and is the opportunity here to have CZ installed again in Binance since he's, you know, legally one step removed from it. I just don't know. And it's not like a knock on CZ or on Binance. I think that's good for everybody if that's able to be the case, because I don't think they treated him fairly.

And I think the debt has been repaid. So it's very confusing to know whether there's truth to this or not, but it's an interesting take. Aurob. I want to go back to Bruce and Simon, and in fact, Dave. Everybody covered how UAE places itself. But I want to give people an idea of how aggressively they do it. For the last four years, I have a whole bunch of my friends from the US, from around the

world used to call me randomly like, I'm in Dubai or I'm in Abu Dhabi, let's catch up. And in those coffee conversations, I've always heard this. These guys are some of the largest holders of SpaceX and Tesla and these rare and blue chip stocks. Some of them are not public, others are. And they were directly sitting with these sovereign wealth funds. They were directly sitting with the management at ABGN. They were directly sitting with similar houses. And the aggression can be observed in a simple fact that they are trying to get those stocks to be traded or to be future traded, at least in ADX. Now, how many times in your lifetime have you ever heard that level of aggression?

Like direct involvement of trying to get the best stocks, stocks not just as a stock, but a pile of that stock to get into local markets to be traded. So they truly understand the capital markets from the core of it, from the execution point of it, from the retail activity side of it. So I wouldn't deny a penny or a percent of what Dave and Simon have projected. And in fact, Bruce has given a good idea on how things have always rolled. So what you're looking at is crypto was a currency initially. So well, good currency, we did good with currency. Then we became crypto assets and digital assets. Now we are real world assets. We are basically heading in a direction where crypto will encompass everything in finance are real world assets. We're basically heading in a direction where

crypto will encompass everything in finance and real world. Everything will be tokenized. And if the largest, largest, largest user base, the largest infrastructure, the most influential person, I mean, go on and on like the way you've seen in Dubai, they're making everything world's biggest tower, world's biggest lake, world's biggest this, that, and those, world's largest fart, whatever. Why wouldn't they get the world's biggest exchange? The world's biggest fault coin. If they get... I was going to say the exact same thing. So yeah, why would they ever miss out on the world's biggest finance play? I mean, at least I can say that.

I mean, I can say that everywhere, but I'm saying in this conversation with the people here, we all know where crypto is heading and what crypto is capable of. Why are we in this? So if we know that that's going to be the future and everything will be tokenized, then there is no bigger player than Binance. And if I didn't have that perspective and thank you, Simon, for bringing it. But being the world's largest clearinghouse that has worked on building those rails, getting themselves out of the FATF gray list last year, which was insanely

celebrated, they're in the best position to get the world capital for neat and clean stock trading. And this time, the stock will be shipped from here to the US and not the other way around. Or it'll be a tokenized version of everything traded everywhere else. That's the Irish, right? If you think about Binance US to Binance, if you look at the DOJ, this is why I believe there was a massive grand conspiracy from the Fed to the SEC, based upon the banks and Operation Chokepoint 2.0. It is crystal clear that there was a grand conspiracy. What was it that Binance got done for?

Well, obviously, there was the money laundering KYC side not being registered within the US and taking on US users. That was the foundation of the case. But what was the real big problem that didn't get looked into much? It was the rails because they got their stablecoin shut down as they were getting real traction with the stablecoin. And that was the rails between Binance and Binance US was very murky because it didn't feel like the dollars were or the treasuries were segregated in the right

place. And one exchange was borrowing from the other in an environment of trying to bootstrap that network and get the segregation right. But all of that is just a world of jurisdiction to jurisdiction that is being just broken down one piece at a time as we enter into this borderless capital markets on blockchain rails that just, especially with AI, that just can't translate jurisdiction because it just doesn't make sense anymore. And so it's ironic that that's the rails. And if anybody thinks that a key energy player, key energy player in jurisdiction would sit back

and watch America say that it's gonna have a Bitcoin strategic reserve and not sit in the middle between China and America and not think that they should be investing heavily in ASICs and mining Bitcoin and building their own Bitcoin strategic reserve quietly on the side while everyone else is talking about the American Bitcoin strategic reserve, then you must think that these governments and some of the controllers of wealth are some of the dumbest people out there. The price is down for a reason because nation states want it to be down. Yeah, Zillion and Dave. Yeah, very quickly. I just

think that the US still has a massive advantage under the legislation of stable coins, especially when it comes to people because in order for the UAE to kind of have like this global financial, I think that a necessary condition would be to have the ability to trade digital, Dyrham, digital, Moroccan Dyrham, digital, Neira, digital, whatever. In order to issue those type of currencies, you have to have to issue it under a very solid jurisdiction. I think from a legislation standpoint, you're still going to have, I think that most of these emerging market issuances of stablecoins are going to happen in the US under the US stablecoin Act or whatever that legislation is, simply because that provides a safe haven for these issuers, because a

lot of these countries will see the issuance of a stablecoin denominated in their national currency as a sovereignty issue. And they could be very aggressive in terms of stopping that, etc. So I think that the entrepreneurs that are going to kind of front run this opportunity and do this because they will be used case for it in the UAE. Definitely. They would still have a very, very good interest into going into the US simply because once you do it under regulation there, you're kind of safe. No one is going to come and fight a US regulated

company. That's all I have to say. Yeah, Dave. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of unpacking here. I mean, generally, on these subjects, I think Bruce and Simon are right. I mean, all you have to do is go to Dubai and if you talk to Emiratis for even 30 seconds, you get the message. They want to leapfrog, they want to be in the future, they understand that.

That being said, if you listen to Trump for any even 30 seconds, he wants the US to be the epicenter of whatever he thinks is strategically important So there's gonna be a lot of machinations here and I agree with Simon about that There is a lot of positioning. There's a lot of game theory But the one thing that is clear is our regulators understand they do because I actually talked to They're two days ago. They understand that the future of capital markets is going to be global.

So they're going to care about a couple of things specifically. They want the issuers to be here in the United States of the actual capital stock. And they know trading is going to be global with that capital stock. And they're more or less okay with that. They just want to try to figure out the right way around it. That's why I made the point earlier about derivatives because, you know, Binance has a huge lead in derivatives and, you know,

they're obviously very large in spot markets as well, but, you know, that user base is extremely important. And if you think that US entrepreneurs and US issuers don't want to be able to access that liquidity, you're nuts. I mean, obviously, US companies want that and they want the regulated environment. They want to have it be in a sense where I know Bruce thinks there's no use for regulation, but there's still a sense among issuers that it's with having you know accounting rules that are standardized

And that that people understand that if they're lied to by the issuer of the the asset That issuer could potentially go to jail or at the very least stick the torque bar on them and all of this matters So, you know, there's a lot to play here. But the strategy is So, you know, there's a lot to play here, but the strategy is not just sound. It's it makes it mean it's it's it's flipping obvious, right? You know, if you think about it, London is kind of spit the bit when it comes to being the secondary or the leading international financial center. Europe can't get out of their own way. So, you know, the Emirates actually, Simon's right.

It's the center of the world is where everything's being built. I mean, hell, you know, our CEO, you know, my son, Ian has a golden visa in Dubai and lives there, you know, for exactly the reasons that Bruce mentioned, because it makes enormous amounts of sense. So I'm going to borrow your seat as a host, Scott. So I'm going to borrow your seat as a host, Scott. Mario just appeared, so enjoy. Yeah, yeah. I just saw that. I was actually about to quote him. So he thrashed my joke as always. But okay, you know, we have discussed this for 40 good minutes.

We've all given our thoughts and there are no raised hands. So I'm expecting nobody has no more thoughts on this. Guys, can we take a step back and maybe rethink about it? Okay, listing capital markets done. What do you think, what else do you think could be the reason of this investment? What else do you think Binance could need or maybe the government could need

or maybe just a fund could need? And last but not the, oh, he's interested. See, he's back. He won't talk. It's his ghost. It's an AI. Yeah, exactly. No, who is? So, and what about a simple, I mean, conspiracy theory on the other side? Maybe Binance needs that capital. Who doesn't?

That's a chance. I mean, we seek Binance. Have you seen the liquidity on Binance? That's stuck. The liquidity did not stop. That is the most liquid exchange in the world. If you want to get trades done, you need to be on Binance. Simon, believe me, yes, from day one. But I'm trying to make trades done, you need to be on Binance. Simon, believe me, yes, it's from day one.

But I'm trying to make this exciting, right? We've discussed it. We have five more minutes. Let's make it exciting. So you think there still might be a hole? I'm just saying maybe. Look at the price of BNP. Look at the amount of trading fees that they're making.

If Binance couldn't meet client assets at this stage, I think they could, if they had any type of liquidity issue, they could have solved it within one year of the volume that they're doing. Are they paying the United States government, Simon? The $4 billion? I'm not questioning the, yeah, they paid it immediately. And there was a $4 billion BNP sale at the same right now in 24 hours, by the way. So anyway, so that is also one guys, we can go down that route. They're trying to get a few billion out of it.

I'm just trying to play devil's advocate to make this exciting. Right. So simple thing. I'm not talking about their liquidity, but I'm just saying maybe they can use an extra 2 billion somewhere. Who knows? Let's think about that. That's one. Maybe there are other utilities, not just liquidity.

Maybe there's some other strategic reason. Let's explore that. Like we have pretty, like there are some pretty intelligent people. I think it's more likely they would print 2 billion with a stablecoin and do what Heather's doing and earn a bunch of yield from the US government and invest it in Bitcoin. But Simon, if MGX is listening, I could use $2 billion in liquidity if we're just handing it out to people who... Yeah, they need the media.

You are the media, Scott. I feel like doing this show for free every day should probably earn me $2 billion by now. But hey, whatever. I don't think we have any evidence there's a hole. Yeah, it's a flop. Didn't Binance help Bybit fill their hole? Or the bridge loan in short term? Yeah, bridge loan. Exactly. That was claimed. The number wasn't given.

I can't remember how much they did, but that was, I thought, very unique to 2025 that when one exchange had a major incident this time, everybody rushed to their aid instead of cannibalizing and watching them die, right? You think back to the days of CZ versus SPF, that wouldn't have happened, right? It's, I think at the end of the day, your human qualities matter.

I think that was one of the best and best managed hack ever in the history. And while we're just waking up from the largest Indian exchange, which was supposed to be Binance owned, you know, was it exact and how, you know, it was such a stupid banishment altogether. And of course, the founders are busy building other companies. And that's why. So I think it's a human part. It's the entrepreneurial part of the founder and the team on how transparently and aggressively and wholeheartedly they managed it.

Again, that's my independent analysis. Being a VC, I'm always a big fan of good entrepreneurs. If someone else has another angle, maybe they can present it. I would like to say I got a wrap because I have another conversation that I needed to do in a few minutes, but it is worth noting. We'll probably continue this conversation as we get more information as to all of this, as to why this deal happened,

and certainly how much truth there is to the CZ Trump-Binance US rumors that seem to have flip-flopped entirely while we were having this conversation. Guys, give everybody on stage a follow. Please, they're all amazing. Great conversation today. It's fun because at this point, 50% of the people on stage at any given time are people

I count as actual friends in real life. So it makes for a really good time for me to do this show every single day. And thank you all. Everybody will see you tomorrow at 10 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time for another Crypto Town Hall. Later.