Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser, and his co-investors hold a 49% stake in WLTC Holdings, the holding company behind World Liberty Financial’s planned banking venture, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Aug. 27. The position is held through StringZ Holding RSC, while a Trump family-affiliated entity holds about 38%, the report said. The figures would make the Abu Dhabi investor and his co-investors the largest shareholders in the holding company behind the planned bank. World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-linked decentralized finance project, has been working since early 2026 to secure a federal charter for its stablecoin operations.
What the ownership disclosure shows
The disclosure fills in the capital structure behind World Liberty’s push into federally chartered banking. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval this month for World Liberty to establish a national trust bank that would issue, redeem and safeguard its USD1 stablecoin, a step the company framed as clearing its first OCC hurdle. That approval remains conditional, and the bank must still meet OCC conditions and pass a final examination before it can begin operations.
A deepening Abu Dhabi relationship
Tahnoon and his co-investors previously put $500 million into World Liberty Financial in January 2025 for a 49% stake in the company, a deal the site has covered as one of the largest sovereign-linked crypto investments. The new holding-company stake indicates the same investors are anchoring the banking arm as well as the broader crypto business, deepening the overlap between a U.S. presidential family’s ventures and a foreign state-linked investor.
What remains unclear
The Journal report does not detail the identities of the co-investors alongside Tahnoon or how control is divided between the 49% and 38% blocks. Because the ownership figures come from the Journal’s reporting rather than a public filing, the full structure may not be confirmed until World Liberty or regulators publish formal documents. The OCC approval is preliminary and conditional, so the trust bank has not begun operating and could still fail to secure final clearance. It is also not yet clear whether the co-investors include sovereign-wealth vehicles or other institutional backers.
