Rich by Coin

A cryptocurrency venture backed by President Donald Trump has applied for a US banking licence that would broaden its access to the traditional financial system. The Trump family’s World Liberty Financial (WLF), which counts the president as co-founder emeritus, said on Wednesday it had applied for a national bank trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a department of the Treasury that regulates financial institutions. A banking licence would further expand the Trump family’s rapidly growing crypto empire, which the Financial Times previously reported reaped more than $1bn in pre-tax profits in one year. Gaining a charter would enable a new WLF entity called World Liberty Trust to issue and custody its USD1 stablecoin, a crypto token intended to match the value of the US dollar, the company said.

National trust banks cannot provide loans or take direct deposits. It would also allow WLF to operate under a single regulator, the OCC, rather than apply for licences from individual states, and help it to comply with the Genius Act. The WLF’s banking application comes a month after the OCC conditionally approved charter applications from five other crypto companies, including payments group Ripple and digital asset custodian BitGo, which currently issues and safeguards USD1. The crypto venture was set up in late 2024 by the president’s three sons and the sons of Trump’s special envoy for peace negotiations, Steve Witkoff.

WLF runs two tokens, a tradeable token called WLFI and USD1, which has a total market value of about $3.3bn. WLF is one of several crypto projects the president and his family have launched over the past year, with Trump having embraced digital trading cards, stablecoins, tokens and a so-called decentralised finance platform while running the world’s largest economy. The president declared a personal income of $57.3mn from World Liberty Financial in his latest financial disclosure, which only covers the 2024 calendar year. Mack McCain, WLF’s general counsel, who is named as the “trust officer” in its application, said: “The OCC has supervised trust activities for over a century. World Liberty Trust will operate under that same framework, with segregated customer assets, independent reserve management and regular examination.”