The Trump family made $32 billion from it. Was Changpeng Zhao the manipulator?

A little-known story is emerging in the Trump family's cryptocurrency business empire, and behind it is Zhao Changpeng of Binance.

On August 12, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family's cryptocurrency business is creating wealth at an unprecedented rate, having created more than US$4.5 billion (approximately RMB 32 billion) since the election, exceeding any other sector of the Trump business empire.

Behind this success is an undisclosed chain of interests with Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, and the key player is the trading platform PancakeSwap.

In June this year, World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto company, announced a partnership with PancakeSwap to increase the adoption of its issued stablecoin USD1. Since then, USD1 trading volume has exploded on PancakeSwap, becoming the core engine driving World Liberty Financial's profit growth. However, the partnership announcement did not disclose a key fact: according to people familiar with the company, PancakeSwap was actually created and continuously overseen by Binance's internal employees. This information further ties the Trump family's business interests to Binance.

At the same time, Binance founder Zhao Changpeng, who was jailed for four months last year for corporate money laundering and other issues and agreed to pay a huge fine of 4.3 billion US dollars, is stepping up his lobbying efforts at the White House in the hope of obtaining a presidential pardon.

People familiar with the matter said that Zhao Changpeng recently hired Ches McDowell, a lobbyist close to Donald Trump Jr., to promote this matter.

This series of business operations has aroused scrutiny from the outside world regarding potential conflicts of interest. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded, stating that "the media's continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible," and emphasized that "President Trump and his family have never, are not, and will never be involved in any conflict of interest." PancakeSwap: Anonymous "Chefs" and the Man Behind Binance PancakeSwap presents a relaxed, decentralized image, claiming to be run by a group of anonymous "chefs" and comparing cryptocurrency trading to "flipping pancakes." However, its background is far more complex.

Former Binance employees stated that the platform was an internal project incubated by Binance in 2020 to seize the "decentralized finance" (DeFi) craze and has always been under Binance's supervision.

PancakeSwap's trading platform is built on Binance's blockchain network, which provides basic technical support for its operation. This secretive management relationship means that Binance actually provided key infrastructure and market channels for the success of USD1, all of which was not fully disclosed to the public.

USD1 Stablecoin: The Incentive Game Behind the Surging Trading Volume

At the heart of the Trump family's wealth growth is the USD1 stablecoin issued by their company, World Liberty Financial. A stablecoin is a digital currency pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, and the issuer earns interest by investing its reserves in government bonds and money market funds. It is estimated that based on the current circulation of more than $2 billion, USD1 can generate about $80 million in revenue for World Liberty each year, and the Trump family holds a 40% stake in the company. According to a disclosure document released on Monday, the Trump family's stake in the cryptocurrency is valued at $4.5 billion.

In order to ignite the market demand for USD1, PancakeSwap played the role of a "booster". The platform launched an event called "Liquidity Drive", offering a bonus of up to 1 million US dollars to the most active users trading USD1.

Incentivized by this, the daily trading volume of USD1 on PancakeSwap soared from tens of millions of US dollars to more than 1 billion US dollars, accounting for more than 90% of its total global trading volume. Trevor Xu, founder of the crypto AI company Tagger, said, "The mainstream narrative in the ecosystem is that Binance is supporting USD1." Intertwined interests: from investment to pardon lobbying Binance's support for USD1 goes beyond PancakeSwap. Blockchain data shows that the Binance platform itself holds $2 billion worth of USD1. By not liquidating these stablecoins, World Liberty ensures that it can continue to profit from its reserve investments. Furthermore, Binance is promoting emerging token projects that trade against USD1 through its "Binance Alpha" program, further expanding USD1's use cases. As business cooperation deepens, Zhao Changpeng's political aspirations appear to be surfacing. Last year, Binance agreed to pay a massive $4.3 billion fine for being a "money laundering hub," and Zhao Changpeng himself was imprisoned. According to people familiar with the matter, the crypto tycoon, worth over $70 billion, recently hired Ches McDowell, a lobbyist close to Donald Trump Jr., to secure a presidential pardon for him. Zhao Changpeng himself once said on social media that "no serious criminal would mind being pardoned", but at the same time denied that this was related to business transactions.