Now, World Liberty is on the verge of being approved for a national trust bank charter, NOTUS reported last week. If it goes through, the company would be able to issue its USD1 “stablecoin” — a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar — more freely, without having to go through a cryptocurrency exchange. And, of course, the Trump family would receive a cut through transaction fees.
In addition to the straightforward potential for presidential self-enrichment, critics argue that the charter application itself is a conflict of interest; the application is being reviewed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, whose leadership is appointed by the president. (Trump has said he is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, while Witkoff has divested outright.)
Now what they need is the banking authority so that they can cut down on the fees that they have to pay outside sources, they can increase the fees that they make, and they can also centralize all regulation under the federal government.
USD1 is a stablecoin, which is crypto. It means it is backed one-to-one by reserves. Think of it as a bank loan, only going the opposite way. You are giving money to World Liberty Financial. You’re giving US dollars and they’re giving you this virtual currency. And the whole time that they’re sitting on your US dollars, they’re investing them in Treasuries and they are keeping the interest.
In spring of 2025 it was announced that an investment firm backed by the national security adviser of the UAE had purchased $2 billion of these magic beans using US dollars and was investing them in [the crypto exchange] Binance. It went from nothing to all of a sudden being one of the most popular stablecoins out there, by way of the UAE national security adviser directing this money towards them.
That’s a lot of what this banking trust license would allow them to do. Right now, the reserves have to be held someplace else — they can’t hold their own reserves. Similarly, they can’t issue their own [crypto] coin in the United States. It has to be done elsewhere. If this trust gets approved, which we believe it’s going to be soon, that would allow them to essentially collect more fees in direct transactions and take out some middlemen in transactions they already have going on.
This is regulatory capture to the extreme, where they’re applying for a banking license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. And that is part of the Treasury, which is under Donald Trump’s administration. So here you have World Liberty Financial to be regulated by an agency of the US government that is under Donald Trump’s control.
Exactly. And another benefit of this that ties into the administration is if this does get approved for this license, it will fall under federal regulators, not state regulators. This puts his World Liberty Financial in the purview of a federal agency, which appears that it would make it a lot harder for states to try to get in there and push back on this.
Everything. Everything. You’ve got an issue where we have a foreign government investing in this. Another firm backed by the UAE’s national security adviser also owns 49 percent of World Liberty Financial, something the American people didn’t find out about until a year after it took place. We heard a lot in the first term about foreign emoluments. There were all sorts of concerns about foreign governments buying rooms and drinks at his hotel holding banquets.
When he first came in and had that DC hotel and the golf clubs, I thought people were like, well, it’s Donald Trump. Of course he’s going to do this sort of stuff. I think that’s the advantage that Donald Trump has long had is that people have known him for decades. And he’s always been like this. So what are you expecting?