World Liberty Financial, the crypto company launched in 2024 by President Donald Trump and his sons Don Jr. and Eric, announced it had received preliminary approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to operate its subsidiary World Liberty Financial Trust as a national trust bank on Aug. 14.
The Trump administration bestowing regulatory legitimacy on the president’s company marks the most significant milestone in Trump’s now long and unprecedented history of entangling his private businesses with his public role as president.
The amount of money on the line exceeds any profit Trump took in from his D.C. hotel or any other venture in his first term. Trump, who holds the title of “Co-Founder Emeritus,” and his sons, who are listed as “co-founders,” own a 38% stake in World Liberty Financial, leading to an increase of more than $2 billion in his net worth since taking office. The potential for corruption is greater, as investors can spend far more to curry favor by parking billions in Trump’s bank, which plans to mint and safeguard its own stablecoin, a form of cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar. And the conflict between his private business and the public trust is more direct as a federal regulator, appointed by Trump and serving at his pleasure, will now provide oversight of the president’s own bank.
“This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement following the charter announcement.
While the OCC would not comment on a specific charter application, a spokesperson said in an email that the chartering process “is transparent, apolitical and nonpartisan,” and overseen by “seasoned civil servants.”
Still, the clearest worry with the company’s charter approval is that it provides a veneer of regulatory legitimacy for potential corruption.
“The concern is that the stablecoin business provides one more opportunity for a CEO who wants to advance his business or someone who has broken the law who’s seeking a pardon or anyone else hoping to get some favor from the federal gov to engage in a transaction that is profitable to the president’s business interests,” Warren told HuffPost. “That’s corruption.”
Altaf Qadri via Associated Press
These concerns are not merely speculative. The Trump administration has already bestowed access, pardons, legal relief and policy benefits to investors, depositors and partners of World Liberty Financial.
“All of President Trump’s investment holdings are held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. Any assertions of improprieties are “lies and false accusations” from “the fake news media,” Kelly added. World Liberty Financial did not respond to a request for comment.
But the company poses other threats that extend beyond conflicts of interest, corruption and padding the president and his family’s net worth. The insertion of a presidentially-connected firm into the financial system raises new concerns about how this combination of political and financial power can drive market distortion, systemic risk and centralization. It augurs a new era of politicized finance with potentially huge ramifications.
“A conflict of interest at the top really doesn’t stay personal, it really does distort competition and it’ll steer capital flows, it will concentrate risk and quietly reshape the entire market,” said Chastity Murphy, a former senior adviser to the assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department and an expert on cryptocurrency.
To begin to understand what’s at stake, you have to understand what World Liberty Financial gains when it becomes a national trust bank. First, the company will be provided significant regulatory oversight so that it can issue and hold its own stablecoin, USD1. The company ― and therefore Trump ― earn profits through interest on deposits in USD1, which is currently operated by the company BitGo and holds a capitalization of $4 billion.
The overlap of presidential authority, regulatory power and private financial infrastructure raises the possibility of a company untethered from the normal rules. It is almost certain to be treated favorably by financial regulators and law enforcement agencies as Trump has asserted the right to direct and fire them as he sees fit.
“When political power intersects with private money infrastructure, you don’t just get conflict of interest, you get distorted markets, moral hazard and weakened regulatory independence,” Murphy said. “It sets a precedent that quietly will politicize the financial system itself.”
This politicization could present itself in numerous ways. The most obvious being that “Trump could put pressure on the Comptroller of the Currency to do various things to benefit World Liberty Financial, and therefore to benefit him,” according to Todd Phillips, a professor of law and business at Georgia State University, who has written about the problems with a presidentially-connected cryptocurrency company.
“When political power intersects with private money infrastructure, you don’t just get conflict of interest, you get distorted markets, moral hazard and weakened regulatory independence. It sets a precedent that quietly will politicize the financial system itself.”
– Chastity Murphy, former senior adviser to the assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department
Pressure could come as a light touch on oversight and enforcement for World Liberty Financial and, alternatively, a heavy touch for its competitors. It would effectively make the company a state-favored enterprise by default as regulators under Trump’s thumb bend the rules to favor the president’s company.
“If a stablecoin issuer appears state favored you’ll see cheaper funding for that company and then more liquidity riding through its rails,” Murphy said. “The market stops being neutral because World Liberty Financial is more politically favored, so we’ll see the market steer toward it and steer away from other competitors. Even subtle differences in oversight matters.”
In response to public comments about the president’s company receiving favorable oversight, Stephen Lybarger, senior deputy comptroller overseeing chartering, wrote that “career OCC staff are generally responsible for the supervision of, and enforcement of laws related to, OCC-supervised institutions,” and “receive regular training and information on the many different avenues available to them to raise concerns related to ethics or personnel issues.”
Such pressure could also extend to favorable legal or regulatory oversight for those holding deposits in World Liberty Financial’s USD1. Depositors or other partners could find themselves protected from legal scrutiny from financial regulators or federal law enforcement out of a concern that it could embarrass the president. Already, World Liberty Financial has been found to have partnered with another crypto firm connected to sanctioned individuals, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“There’s a feedback loop here in which if you’re going to do something that is illicit then you might as well do it over there,” Raúl Carrillo, a professor at Boston College Law School and expert on cryptocurrency, said.
Politicization could also lead to market distortion without regulators explicitly taking (or not taking) action. Individuals, companies and countries looking to use stablecoins for transactions or investments will simply know that using the presidentially-connected USD1 could win them favor from the White House. This will naturally benefit World Liberty Financial, according to Murphy, by “driving adoption, capital flow, partnership and market dominance,” toward the firm “not because it’s better, but because it’s politically advantaged.”
There’s another reason why USD1 would be a favored stablecoin: Regulators are almost certain to bail out the company and its stablecoin holders if it falters or the next financial crisis hits.
“I would be hard pressed to say that it’s not too-big-to-fail on conception,” Carrillo said.
Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
As seen in past financial crises, when an entity is too-big-to-fail and assumes a government backstop, it tends to take risks that put the broader financial system at risk. World Liberty Financial would be no different if it tries to cut corners as it grows rapidly, for example by not properly backing user stablecoin deposits with an equal amount of real U.S. dollars held in the form of short-term government treasuries, dollar deposits or other cash equivalents.
Financial regulators, including the comptroller of the currency, could step in to put a stop to this, but they all now serve at the pleasure of the president ― who is part owner of the company.
During a crisis, depositors may not be able to access their money and the company could teeter. Regulatory uncertainty created by the president’s involvement could then lead investors to question the liquidity of other firms, creating contagion fears. In the worst case scenario, this could spark a fire sale of treasury bills, impacting the whole U.S. financial system.
What sets World Liberty Financial apart is not that it is “too big,” rather its political connections are too tight as the regulator overseeing it is quite literally controlled by a part-owner of the company.
“There’s a really good reason why financial regulators should be independent,” Phillips said. “We want a fair level playing field where regulators can act without fear or favor, and we’re now facing the possibility of that going away.”
Beyond the issues of risk and market distortion, World Liberty Financial’s preliminary charter approval also raises questions not really contemplated in modern times about how a president can combine his control of private money with public power to enact his own private policy agenda or advance his political interests.
“Even amongst financial regulation experts, we are not inclined enough yet to recognize that this is really about building separate infrastructure and not necessarily about the president padding his pockets,” Carrillo said.
Owning a crypto bank enables Trump to print his own money, issue coins to customers and direct funding through a private financial network. This infrastructure enables Trump and his family to punish enemies and reward friends. And this acts as a form of centralization akin to Trump’s seizure of the Treasury Department’s payment system in 2025 where the president accrues even more power, directing public policy and monetary flows with no transparency or political accountability.
This centralization is evident in the scandals swirling around World Liberty Financial involving investment and deposits from foreign countries seeking discrete actions from Trump’s administration.
Just days before taking office, a sovereign wealth fund run by the national security adviser for the United Arab Emirates, known as the “Spy Sheikh,” secretly invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial, obtaining a 49% stake in the company, according to a February 2026 report by The Wall Street Journal.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In May 2025, MGX, a company run by the same UAE official, announced it would invest $2 billion into World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin: USD1. This not only launched Trump’s crypto firm into the upper echelons of the stablecoin industry, but it also meant that Trump would earn millions from interest on that $2 billion investment.
Two weeks later, the Trump administration approved a multibillion sale of valuable computer chips to the UAE negotiated by Steve Witkoff, who was a part owner of World Liberty Financial at the time and whose son helps run the company.
UAE then used that $2 billion deposit in USD1 to invest in Binance, the crypto trading platform that pleaded guilty, along with its founder Changpeng Zhao, to charges of money laundering, sanctions evasion and other illicit activity, including allowing terrorists, drug traffickers and child sexual abusers to use its platform in 2023. Zhao served a four-month jail sentence, and Binance paid a $4 billion fine.
In October 2025, Trump pardoned Zhao, who now lives in the UAE, after a lobbying campaign connected to Trump’s son Don Jr., one of the heads of World Liberty Financial. Since then, Binance has become the primary holder of World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin with 87% of USD1 being held in Binance wallets as of February 2026. This was, at the time, “a greater concentration than any other major stablecoin has at a single exchange,” according to Forbes.
This entanglement now threatens U.S. foreign policy as Trump has floated bailing out UAE by providing currency swaps and other assistance as the country has been hit hard economically after Trump’s war on Iran led Iran to retaliate by attacking UAE, and closing shipping lanes that carried its oil and other resources to other countries.
While this is potentially evidence of quid pro quo corruption ― something all parties deny ― it also shows how the private financial infrastructure of a presidentially-connected crypto bank can be used to set U.S. government policy.
World Liberty Financial still must satisfy certain conditions before it receives final approval to operate as a trust bank, according to the OCC. There is no clear timeline on when that may occur, but congressional oversight may intervene as the charter approval process is certain to become a subject of oversight if Democrats win control of one or both chambers of Congress in November.
Such oversight may determine whether a presidentially-connected bank becomes a permanent feature of U.S. politics and finance, or just another temporary Trump era cash grab.