It's not personal. It's strictly business. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC, the federal regulator which issues national banking charters in the United States) gave the conditional green light on August 14 to the creation of World Liberty Trust Co. World Liberty Financial had submitted its application in early 2026. Seven months later, the company co-founded by Donald Trump and his three sons took the first step. Not a total green light.
World Liberty Trust Co: what the OCC (really) approved
This approval remains preliminary and does not yet authorize anything on the ground. Before it can open its doors, World Liberty Trust will need to maintain at least $20 million in capital, appoint a qualified internal audit manager, and notify the regulator of any major changes in its business plan, says CoinDesk.
Once launched, the structure would issue and repurchase USD1, manage the reserves that back it (the safe assets, mainly US Treasury bills, which guarantee its value), and offer custody of digital assets to institutional clients. USD1 already has more than $4 billion in circulation. Enough to transform a stablecoin project into a full-fledged banking establishment. On paper, for now.
USD1 and the Trump family, a story that already weighs 500 million
The question hanging over this file does not date from August 14. World Liberty Financial was launched a few months before the 2024 election by Trump and his sons. Their participation has declined over the months: 75% at the end of December, around 40% in June, according to CNBC.
Yet company documents show the family was entitled to nearly $500 million from a 2025 deal with Alt5 Sigma, a company whose stock has since lost more than 90% of its value. A special committee of the House of Representatives is investigating in parallel another agreement, for approximately the same amount, concluded with an entity linked to Abu Dhabi. The White House assures that there is no conflict of interest.
A federal regulator that grants a banking charter to a company partly owned by the sitting president and his children. It's hard not to see it, at the very least, as a funny scenario.
World Liberty is not alone in the race for crypto banking charters
The movement extends well beyond the Trump family. At least eleven crypto companies have applied for a national trust bank charter (a structure that allows custody, settlement and fiduciary services to be managed in all US states without a state-by-state process) in the space of 83 days this year, according to Davis Wright Tremaine. Circle received its final approval in July, becoming the second fully approved crypto-native player after Anchorage Digital, alone in this niche since 2021. Paxos is still waiting with a simple conditional approval obtained in December. BitGo and Fidelity Digital Assets took the shortcut of converting an existing state charter rather than starting from scratch.
