OCC Gives Trump Family Crypto Venture Conditional Approval for National Trust Bank

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved a national trust bank charter Friday for World Liberty Trust Company, an entity tied to World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by President Trump and his sons.

The approval lets World Liberty Trust issue and redeem its USD1 stablecoin, hold the dollar reserves backing it, and provide custody services to institutional clients, according to the OCC's approval letter. It cannot take federally insured deposits or make traditional loans. This is not a bank in the Chase or Bank of America sense—it's a trust charter, narrower and more specialized.

USD1 currently runs through BitGo Bank & Trust, which issues the token and holds its reserves. Under the new charter, once finalized, World Liberty Trust would take over both jobs, bringing the operation under direct OCC supervision. USD1 is the fourth-largest stablecoin in the world, with a market value of roughly $4 billion, according to Breitbart.

This approval is preliminary, not final. World Liberty Trust still has to clear "preopening requirements," according to CoinDesk, including raising at least $20 million in capital, keeping half of it liquid, and hiring a qualified internal audit manager, per Reuters reporting carried by the Lufkin Daily News. The OCC can still modify, suspend, or pull the approval if something changes.

World Liberty Financial's website discloses that an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and his family owns 38% of the company, according to CNBC. Zach Witkoff, son of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, is CEO of World Liberty Financial and chairman of the new trust company. "We welcome continuous scrutiny from Federal regulators for many years to come," Witkoff said in a statement.

The conflict-of-interest fight

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, has fought this application since at least February, when she told Comptroller Jonathan Gould that approving it would make him "an accomplice" to corruption, according to Breitbart. She pushed for the unredacted application and raised questions about undisclosed investors tied to the United Arab Emirates.

Warren's concern centers on a simple problem: the sitting president's family owns more than a third of a company that just got a federal banking charter from regulators the president appointed. After Friday's approval, Warren said Trump "is now the first President in history to approve, operate, and supervise his own bank," calling it "the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen," according to CNBC. She says she'll introduce legislation barring presidents and senior officials from owning or controlling banks.

Gould's response has been consistent: the agency isn't bending to political pressure from either direction. "The only political pressure I have felt from any part of the United States Government, Senator, is from you," he told Warren, according to Breitbart. The OCC says career staff, not political appointees, reviewed the application for compliance with legal and regulatory standards.

The OCC's letter also addressed the foreign-investor question directly, according to Reuters. It said non-U.S. investors aren't principal shareholders and that the bank secured "passivity agreements" from several investors, including foreign ones, pledging not to seek control over the bank's operations. Eric Trump signed one of those agreements as president of a Trump-family investment vehicle, per Reuters.

Is this actually unusual, or is it the new normal for crypto?

World Liberty isn't the only crypto firm chasing this kind of charter. Ripple and Circle have both received preliminary approval for similar trust charters under Gould, according to Reuters. The OCC has fielded 40 new bank charter applications since 2025, a sharp jump from the Biden years, according to CNBC, with many tied to crypto.

A senior OCC official told the Daily Caller the agency's broader goal is reviving de novo bank formation generally, arguing that post-2008 regulatory caution effectively told new applicants not to bother. Fewer than four de novo charters a year were approved between 2011 and 2014, the official said. That's a real regulatory trend independent of Trump or crypto, and it's the strongest non-partisan explanation for why the OCC is saying yes more often across the board.

The Daily Caller also quoted Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project, who called it "corruption" that "always ends in tears," and flagged that crypto-tied banks carry the same kind of concentrated-client risk that sank Silicon Valley Bank in 2023.

No investigation or enforcement action has been announced against World Liberty Financial or the OCC over this charter. The concerns raised by Warren and outside critics remain allegations about conflicts of interest and process, not findings from any regulatory body or court.

The next concrete marker is whether World Liberty Trust clears the $20 million capital requirement and other preopening conditions the OCC laid out. Until it does, USD1 issuance stays with BitGo, and the charter stays conditional.