The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval on Friday for a national bank trust charter to World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture that counts Donald Trump as co-founder emeritus. The World Liberty Financial banking licence covers stablecoin issuance and digital asset custody. WLF will not be permitted to provide loans or take direct deposits.
To operate as a trust, WLF must meet several conditions, including limiting operations to those defined in its submitted business plan and complying with capital and liquidity requirements. The company’s stablecoin, USD1, a dollar-backed token, has already reached more than $4 billion in circulation. WLF was founded in late 2024 by Trump’s three sons alongside the sons of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for peace negotiations.
The OCC has moved aggressively to open the banking sector to new entrants under the Trump administration, granting conditional approvals to fintech lender Upstart, a Morgan Stanley subsidiary, Peter Thiel-backed bank Erebor, and crypto companies Ripple and Crypto.com. “The OCC is open for business again. The agency received as many applications in 2025 alone as it did in the previous four years,” OCC head Jonathan Gould said in June.
The Political Problem Getting Bigger
The approval arrives as Trump’s crypto business interests face intensifying political scrutiny. Democrats have been pushing for an ethics clause in a landmark crypto market structure bill that would bar senior government officials from profiting from the sector while in office. That push is expected to gain fresh momentum when Congress returns from recess in autumn.
The financial exposure is significant. Trump earned more than $1.16 billion in crypto sales and memecoin royalties last year following the release of his financial disclosures in June. His administration simultaneously dropped major Biden-era enforcement cases against the crypto industry, signed the Genius Act regulating stablecoins into law, and presided over an OCC that has approved banking licences for crypto companies at an unprecedented pace.
A Banking Licence and the Politics of Proximity to Power
I have covered enough regulatory cycles in this industry to know that a banking licence from the OCC carries real weight. It brings WLF under formal federal supervision, subjects it to capital and liquidity requirements, and gives USD1 a credibility backstop that most stablecoin projects cannot claim. For institutional investors evaluating stablecoin exposure, federal oversight matters, and this approval meaningfully changes WLF’s standing in that conversation.
What I think analysts need to watch carefully is the broader structural question this approval raises. The OCC has moved faster and more openly toward crypto licensing under this administration than at any point in the sector’s history. That is good for the industry generally. But when the president’s own venture is among the beneficiaries of that policy environment, the line between good crypto policy and beneficial crypto policy becomes harder to draw cleanly.
USD1 has $4 billion in circulation and now has a federal charter behind it. That is a serious product with serious backing. My concern as an analyst is not with the approval itself but with whether the regulatory framework being built around stablecoins is being designed for the market or for specific participants in it. The Genius Act, the OCC’s open-door policy, and this approval arrived in the same political window. Congress will need to answer that question when it returns in autumn, and the market should be paying attention to how that debate resolves.
