World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm affiliated with President Donald Trump’s family, announced Wednesday that it has applied for a banking charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
According to the company, they intend to use a national trust charter to issue USD1, the company’s dollar-backed stablecoin, and to allow customers to more readily use and convert the cryptocurrency.
“This application marks a further evolution of the World Liberty Financial ecosystem,” said Zach Witkoff, the proposed president and chair of World Liberty Trust Company, the entity that applied for the charter. Witkoff is the son of Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
All three of the president's sons are listed on the World Liberty Financial's website as co-founders, and Trump is listed as co-founder emeritus.
The OCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the end of last year, the OCC conditionally granted a number of crypto companies national trust charters, a form of banking charter that put the companies under some federal regulations and allows them to manage digital assets and other financial instruments without having to seek state-by-state approval. It was widely seen as a landmark move by the bank regulator and a huge win for the digital assets sector, and was broadly panned by traditional banks.
WLF joins a growing queue of digital asset companies hoping to get regulatory approval, and eventually gain access to “skinny” master accounts at the Federal Reserve, which would grant them limited use of the Fed’s crucial payments system. Last month, the Federal Reserve asked for feedback on the prospect of creating such accounts, broadly seen as a step towards embracing digital assets. Traditional banks have raised concerns that granting access to the crypto companies could endanger financial stability.
BitGo, the digital asset company that has served as the custodian of USD1, was among the digital asset companies granted a charter in December. Approval for WLF would enable the Trump-backed company to more actively manage its own stablecoin.
“BitGo is proud to have supported USD1’s rapid growth to over $3.3 billion in its first year and looks forward to continuing as a key strategic partner as WLTC becomes fully operational and USD1 enters its next stage of growth,” Bitgo CEO Mike Belshe said in a statement.
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