Treasury Gives Conditional Bank Charter to Trump-Linked Crypto Firm
The U.S. Treasury Department granted World Liberty Trust Company, co-founded by President Donald Trump, conditional approval to operate as a bank and issue a dollar-pegged stablecoin.
The Treasury Department issued a conditional charter on Aug. 14 that allows World Liberty Trust Company to function as a bank and to issue a stablecoin tied to the U.S. dollar. The approval requires the firm to maintain at least $20 million in capital, notify regulators of major business changes and hire an internal audit manager.
World Liberty Financial, co-founded by President Donald Trump and his sons, reported nearly $800 million in revenue for 2025, according to Trump’s financial disclosure. The company’s chief executive, Zach Witkoff, said the firm aims to create “the most trusted and widely used digital dollar in the world while strengthening the role of the U.S. dollar across the global economy.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the charter, calling it “the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen” and said she would introduce legislation to address what she described as corruption.
“All of President Trump’s investment holdings are in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, adding that the claim reflects a long-standing narrative from Democrats.
The Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency noted that career staff, not the comptroller, supervise and enforce banking laws for the new charter. A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, David Wachsman, said the approval includes safeguards that keep the Trump family entity separate from the trust company’s operations to avoid conflicts of interest.
“Critics are missing the point: World Liberty Financial is embracing regulation, not avoiding it,” Wachsman said.
Industry experts, including Christian Catalini of MIT’s Cryptoeconomics Lab, said the charter reflects a broader move to bring crypto firms under traditional banking oversight, though future regulatory approaches could shift under a different administration.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, appointed by Trump, posted that the department is working to provide “regulatory certainty” for businesses and to maintain the U.S. dollar’s role as a global reserve currency.