Trump’s Crypto Empire, Pakistan’s Terror Industrial Complex and the Rise of Shadow Geopolitics
Donald Trump’s foray into cryptocurrency through World Liberty Financial (WLF) marks a bold convergence of political ambition, digital finance, and strategic diplomacy. Founded in 2024, WLF is majority-owned by the Trump family via DT Marks DEFI LLC, giving them 60% equity and 75% of the revenue share.
With Donald Trump as the public face & Eric Trump, Trump Jr on the board, WLF serves as both a financial engine and a geopolitical tool. Its flagship products are the $WLFI governance token & the USD1 stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar designed to function both within institutional markets and consumer-facing blockchain ecosystems.
What elevates this venture from a mere crypto business to a geopolitical flashpoint is WLF’s April 2025 partnership with the Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC).
In a landmark deal, WLF executives led by Zach Witkoff & Co met Bilal Bin Saqib and other Pakistan officials on 26th April 2025, agreed to help build Pakistan’s blockchain infrastructure, promote stablecoin-based remittances, and tokenize real-world assets. The signing came just days after a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, India, involving Pakistan-based groups.
The agreement seeks to position Pakistan as a crypto-forward nation through:
Regulatory sandboxes for blockchain finance.
Tokenization of real-world assets (especially real estate and minerals).
USD1 integration for remittances and cross-border trade.
Advisory frameworks for national-level blockchain infrastructure.
WLF’s executives met not only with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif but also with Army Chief General Asim Munir, raising concerns that the partnership may help Pakistan operate a financial system outside global scrutiny of IMF or even FATF.
Critically, the USD1 stablecoin could be used by Pakistan’s military and intelligence apparatus to move funds for illicit purposes.
This could lead to the emergence of a "digital hawala" system that could facilitate money laundering, narco-terrorism financing, and terrorist operations activities long associated with Pakistan’s military-industrial nexus. The blockchain may anonymize transactions while avoiding traditional FATF and SWIFT oversight, making it ideal for laundering drug money from Balochistan, facilitating arms purchases for proxy actors, and siphoning remittances from overseas communities into opaque state-linked channels.
Trump’s crypto strategy further complicates matters by deliberately sidestepping the Federal Reserve’s authority. His administration is pushing for a national Bitcoin reserve and resisting the rollout of a digital dollar or the CBDC.
This signals a dual financial model: one state-sanctioned and centralized, and another driven by private, politically affiliated stablecoins like USD1 which are pegged to US Treasuries. Since it is Treasury backed, Trump is unleashing a new trend of Private Crypto-Stablecoins pegged to UST in a bid to create more demand for short term US Debt & increase the dollar circulation to counter China's Digital Silk Route of eCNY & CIPS.
The May 2025 decision by Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund to use USD1 in a $2 billion Binance deal exemplifies how Trump’s crypto arm is expanding into sovereign transaction zones.
New Delhi needs to be very cautious about WLF’s alignment with Pakistan as a dangerous evolution of geopolitical grey-zone warfare. There’s rising fear that U.S. political elites are enabling digital infrastructure that can shield hostile regimes from regulatory oversight.
In essence, World Liberty Financial is more than a crypto firm it is a shadow instrument of digital hegemony, privatized diplomacy, and economic warfare.
This Crypto venture by Trump White House could be a new money laundering vehicle for #TerrorIndustrialComplex allowing Pakistan & other rogue regimes to continue to do CIA's dirty work with Impunity under Political & Diplomatic oversight.
nitishastra.substack.com
