Binance with 200 mln users and Tether with ~150bln market cap have long been the go-to crypto players for developing countries. While Coinbase and local players (e.g. Bitpanda/Kraken and similar entities) compete in their local markets, they are not dominant in markets outside of those geographies. Binance has gobbled up most developing countries and have faced regulatory issues in Europe, US and Singapore. 

The CEO of Binance was sentenced to jail in the US for 4 months and paid a large fine ($4.3bn), and roughly around the same time, the SEC and NYDFS put Binance’s stablecoin BUSD (which peaked at $23bn market cap) out of business.

Tether (firm behind USDT) has long been the subject of speculation re its non-transparent activities, largely as a result of not having been formally audited by a big 4 (uses BDO Italia for partial audit). 

Despite this, USDT is the go-to stablecoin for many parts of the world (eg Nigeria, which made USDT/Naira conversion illegal due to its increasing popularity). Nigeria has also sued Binance, detaining two of its employees for months in prison (Gambaryan), who were invited to Nigeria for talks with the government.

USDT has also been the go-to asset for various volatility-averse-shady-folk and was long revered for its censorship resistant features. That has changed in recent times, as USDT has started focusing more on compliance and have been quick to freeze assets belonging to known criminal organisations or countries (like DPRK), leading to a freeze of $225 million USDT. 

Binance and Tether have been fighting with the establishment for a very long time, and have a reputation for being dodgy. This seems to be changing.

With Trump in office, both Binance and Tether have been blessed. BinanceUS is once again allowing the processing of USD (since Feb ‘25) after a 19-month suspension. Tether is custodying its Treasury Bills (~$100bn worth of) with Cantor Fitzgerald, which is led by Howard Lutnick, who’s also Trump’s pick for Secretary of Commerce. Lutnick has been on record (https://youtube.com/shorts/yms_mG5nfXs?si=VIo4IAIt1fBhm6Q9) saying that USDT and Tether is fine, legit and that he has no concerns about the firm.

A new game 

While firms like Coinbase have been playing the “long game”, above board, compliantly derisking its business lines in certain high risk geos (like a traditional financial institution), firms like Binance and Tether have aggressively filled the void. This strategy worked for Coinbase when times were tough (regulatory-wise) for crypto, but it’s unlikely that this will remain a competitive advantage in a more lax regulatory environment. This is evident in Trump’s crypto venture activities World Liberty Financial, through which he launched his own controversial memecoins, stablecoin 1USD, and through which he has taken investments directly from His Excellency Justin Sun (crypto billionaire with history of shady activities). Binance also used Trump’s own stablecoin 1USD as chosen asset for Abu Dhabi’s $2bn sovereign wealth fund investment in Binance.

Why would letting “shady” Binance and Tether into the US inner circle be good for the US? 

The first people to protest here are the compliance officers who are used to a financial regulatory climate where everything needs to be spotless, otherwise it should be exited. This is a result of the decades of regulatory onslaught the sector has seen (driven by globalist, non-governmental agencies such as FATF and the OECD) pushing every client that does not fit the template of a “normal user” into high risk categories (and in doing so ballooning cost of compliance, particularly AML/KYC-related compliance — all to very little gain, catching some ~1% of illicit funds but dragging massively on cost for firms).

But Trump, in his very pro-crypto view (which first felt very opportunistic) could have realised that there is a way to defend the status of the Dollar as global reserve currency without rewriting decades of financial services rules (and going through the legislative process to do so — not to mention retraining the horde of compliance officers in charge of deleting your bank accounts) by instead pushing USD stablecoins as a way to get more USD-related assets into the hands of more people all around the world, especially in countries where China is currently investing heavily (belt&road etc). This process has already begun and was in motion before Trump, as USDT has been in active use in such geos for a long time. Stablecoins offer, in a sense, a SWIFT alternative (and importantly non-fully-government controlled, non-FATF controlled) that is one step outside of the current, suffocated, financial regime.

If you’re priority is increase usage of USD, and by extension UST buyers (stablecoins hold around 170bn USD worth of US treasuries), what better way to do it than enable the very firms that specialise in doing exactly that? 

Binance and Tether are gatekeepers for millions of people in emerging markets, competing directly with Chinese digital RMB and similar local alternatives). Trump himself is arguably ALSO competing with the digital RMB through his own 1USD which, again, Abu Dhabi used for its $2bn investment in Abu Dhabi (the digital RMB is notably available in UAE as one of its key first markets).

Bessent’s comments about EUR losing the opportunity to become the global reserve currency due to confiscating Russian reserves is particularly interesting here (https://x.com/robinmonotti/status/1914966108941029665?s=46), as it shows he’s aware that a global reserve currency needs to be neutral. The dollar stopped being neutral — and maybe Trump through USD-based stablecoins is trying to make it neutral again through the “backdoor” by legitimising the industry at home and encouraging it development internationally. 

Is Trump using USD stablecoins as a way to shore up continued investment in US bonds, while incentivising the usage of USD in non-free market countries (such as China), thereby being a direct nuisance to the PRC and leaders in other controlled economies? Elevating Binance and Tether are exactly the right parties to keep close if you’d like to increase usage of USD stablecoins in territories that likely have very low USD fiat penetration through the natural banking system.

It’s clear that Trump is getting very close to actors that were treated as pariahs before taking office. Binance (which has Chinese ties and was founded there) is now linked to the Trump regime and Tether. This signals a shift to more “degen”-style free market capitalism where you allow or even incentivise a bit of rule-breaking as long as there is a benefit for, in this case, the US.