Trump family virtual-asset firm World Liberty applies for U.S. bank charter

World Liberty Financial, a virtual-asset firm led by U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, is accelerating its move into traditional finance by applying for a U.S. bank charter.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 7th (local time), World Liberty Trust, an entity under World Liberty Financial, has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) under the U.S. Treasury Department for a new de novo national bank charter. The OCC is the agency that charters and supervises all national banks in the United States.

If it obtains the bank charter, World Liberty Trust would be able to directly issue and custody the dollar-pegged stablecoin 'USD1.' BitGo currently holds USD1's reserve assets, and its market capitalization is about $3.4 billion.

This application came after the Trump administration in December last year approved bank or trust-bank charters for BitGo as well as Fidelity Digital Assets, Circle, Ripple, and Paxos. Observers say competition among crypto firms to secure bank licenses is intensifying. However, the trust bank that World Liberty Trust applied for, unlike ordinary commercial banks, would face restrictions on accepting deposits or making loans.

World Liberty said it plans to offer crypto custody and stablecoin conversion services to institutional clients through the bank charter, targeting crypto exchanges, market makers, investment firms, and the like. Mack McCain, general counsel of World Liberty Financial, said, "A bank charter reduces reliance on outside service providers and can increase the speed of product rollouts."

World Liberty Financial is a crypto project in which President Trump was directly involved in launching at the end of 2024. It bills itself as decentralized finance (DeFi) and aims to provide crypto lending, borrowing, and trade-matching services, but its core services have not yet been fully launched.

There are also conflict-of-interest concerns. Some point to precedents such as President Trump pardoning Binance founder Changpeng Zhao as evidence that World Liberty and USD1 may be entangled with political interests. In response, Zach Witkoff, who has been designated as chairman of World Liberty Trust, said, "The president and his family hold only non-voting equity and do not participate in management or day-to-day decision-making."

World Liberty emphasized that the trust bank is designed to comply with the stablecoin regulatory bill, the GENIUS Act, and that it will also adhere to anti-money-laundering and sanctions-screening rules.