Fast forward to 2025. He was probably educated by a campaign check in the American Crypto-lobby and the sweat fairness given to his family, Trump.
The pen strokes have dismantled many of the regulatory guardrails once deemed essential. Soon the Trump family entered the crypto business. One of their earliest strategic partners was Pakistan, a province linked to cross-border terrorism, shady finances and intense diversion of funds.
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What should India do with the superpower where political leaders launch private currency? Or a country where former prisoners are rehabilitated as strategic advisors to sovereign crypto councils? Are we witnessing global powers for endless mint rights, not without democratic oversight, on the full cover of plausible denial?
Changpeng Zhao, former CEO of Binance, pleaded guilty to a serious money laundering failure, spent time in US custody and paid $4.3 billion for the settlement. His crypto exchanges facilitated transactions for authorized groups like Hamas.
The Binance explosion should end his financial career. Instead, he advises the official Pakistan cryptographic task force. Justin Sun, who invested $30 million in Trump-related global Liberty Financial, was under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for civil fraud. Today he is the front row guest of American political fundraisers.
Is crypto trading a new way to buy influence in the US? This seems like a gateway quietly recognized by the global financial order now that it appears that otherwise ineligible actors, namely individuals, governments, or fraudulent states, must lie behind once-excluded opacity.
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It’s a return to Cold War style shadow finance, but has received support from blockchain on behalf of banks. This is all for a superpower that lectures around the world in clean governance. When financial opacity is rebranded as an innovation, geopolitics is taking a new form that we all have to be wary of.
The IMF and the World Bank are concerned. The IMF warns that widespread adoption of private cryptocurrencies threatens financial sovereignty, allowing illegal flows, and undermines capital management, particularly in emerging markets. We saw chaos in El Salvador, Nigeria and Lebanon. There, cryptography experiments coincided with capital volatility and institutional erosion.
Terrorfinance remains a permanent threat to global security. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has repeatedly highlighted how terrorist groups can leverage Crypto to bypass official bank surveillance. However, Pakistan has FATF clearance. For countries like India (at the forefront of cross-border terrorism), this is a real risk. Crypto operated something called “Ehawala.” You can hide boundary-free transfers in real time.
Sovereign states are proven trendy or popular, although private entities should not create currency. For its credit, the Reserve Bank of India saw this coming. Resistance against private cryptocurrencies is neither TI disease nor technophobia. This is a claim of financial sovereignty. In today’s world, capital flows can be weaponized. Therefore, ensuring that such weapons do not aim at us is a matter of national security.
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However, the pressure on yield is mounted. The newly repackaged global crypto platform as a fintech innovation drives softer regulations. In India, domestic actors have lobbyed against India’s high taxes on cryptocurrency profits by insisting that cryptocurrency capital must stop fleeing offshore. In financial security issues, they argue that traditional checks are not perfect, and that ciphers should remain unconfirmed, as they are not illogical and there are no dangerous juveniles. India should not be obliged if the US exerts diplomatic pressure.
Instead, India needs to implement a system for crypto deterrence. State-of-the-art surveillance tools, forensic finance capabilities, and offensive digital arsenals can be deployed against adversarial scenarios of cryptographic use as Trojans to destabilize our financial system. This must be done as well, as strategic weapons are kept reserved.
The future of finance may be digital. But that future must be guided by a sovereign plan, rather than being determined by offshore hype or sponsored games. In the crypto age, our sovereignty must be defended with the same strategic intent that applies to borders, seas, airspace and cyberspace.
Crypto is now a geopolitical instrument and a potential vector of strategic harm. It should be considered a weaponizable tool, even if we secure our financial architecture from any threat we may posed for. This is no longer an issue that the committee will discuss. It’s a political decision. It cannot be postponed without results.
The author is the corporate advisor and author of “Family and Dunda.”
