What to know:
- A Trump family representative discussed buying a stake in Binance's U.S. arm.
- The stake could have been acquired via the Trump-family backed project, World Liberty Financial, Wall Street Journal reported.
- Steve Witkoff, a friend of the U.S. president, was involved in the talks.
A Trump family representative held talks to buy a stake in Binance's U.S. arm, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday.
The stake could have been acquired through Trump-family backed crypto project World Liberty Financial, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Steve Witkoff, a friend of the U.S. president, was involved in the deal talks, the report added. Witkoff and his family founded World Liberty Financial two months before Trump was elected President in November.
The talks started last year after Binance reached out to Trump's allies offering to reach a deal with the family so as to bring the crypto exchange back to the U.S.
BNB, the native cryptocurrency of the Binance linked BNB Chain, jumped as much as 5% on the news, surpassing $600 for the first time in a week.
A representative for Binance.US declined to comment on the report. However, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao said in a post on X that the Journal "got the facts wrong."
"I have had no discussions of a Binance US deal with … well, anyone," CZ wrote. The WSJ didn't report that CZ was involved in the talks, but rather that Binance executives were pursuing it.
The WSJ had also reported that CZ asked President Trump for a pardon. CZ denied he made a deal but did not explicitly say he hadn't asked for a pardon.
"No felon would mind a pardon, especially being the only one in US history who was ever sentenced to prison for a single BSA charge. Feels like the article is motivated as an attack on the President and crypto, and the residual forces of the "war on crypto" from the last administration are still at work. I am always happy to make crypto great everywhere, US and the rest of the world. It’s good to see that even WSJ thinks I should be pardoned," he continued.
The exchange just recently saw its U.S. dollar fiat services restored after it lost the ability to deposit and withdraw USD under the Biden Administration.
Former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler had previously branded Binance.US "a cauldron of fraud" and tried everything in his power to crack down on the exchange. As a result, the company lost thousands of customers and was forced to lay off 70% of its staff after losing billions of dollars.