The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has given conditional approval to World Liberty Trust Co., clearing the way for the Trump family-linked crypto venture to operate as a national trust bank. The decision lets World Liberty Financial (WLF) bring management of its USD1 stablecoin in-house. For now, the company relies on third-party custodian BitGo.
Stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency designed to hold a steady value, usually by keeping it pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by reserves such as cash or short-term government debt. USD1 is currently the fourth-largest stablecoin by market value, at roughly $4 billion. Under the new charter, World Liberty Trust would directly issue and redeem USD1, hold its reserves, and offer digital-asset custody to institutional clients, functions the company previously outsourced.
Approval is still preliminary. World Liberty must meet conditions before opening, including holding at least $20 million in capital and appointing a qualified internal audit manager, and the OCC retains the right to modify or withdraw the approval at any point.
World Liberty’s application is one of roughly 40 de novo bank charter applications the OCC has received over the past 18 months, most from crypto and payments-adjacent firms. As we have earlier reported, stablecoin fintech company Dakota has filed an application with the OCC to charter Dakota National Trust Bank. This unprecedented activity is part of a deliberate push by Comptroller Jonathan Gould to open the national banking system to digital-asset businesses. The OCC’s public list currently shows 13 pending digital-asset licensing applications, including from Payward, Revolut and World Liberty. Firms such as Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo and Fidelity Digital Assets received similar conditional trust charters in December 2025.
The pattern that emerges is a defined, but still evolving, route. First, the institution applies for a national trust charter, then satisfies capital and governance conditions, and finally gains a single federal framework for issuing a stablecoin and custodying reserves, rather than juggling separate state licenses and third-party partners. Not every applicant succeeds, though. The OCC denied Wise National Trust’s application in July, serving as a reminder that approval isn’t automatic.
The approval hasn’t gone unnoticed, not only among the payment providers. The OCC decision is noteworthy on political and ethical grounds too. World Liberty Financial is 38% owned by an entity affiliated with US President Trump and members of his family, and Senator Elizabeth Warren had urged the OCC not to approve the application unless the president divested his interests in the company. World Liberty’s chairman, in turn, responded that the company welcomes “continuous scrutiny from Federal regulators for many years to come.” The episode adds to a wider set of ethics questions already surrounding Trump-linked crypto activity, including debate in Congress over the CLARITY Act, which PaySpace Magazine Global covered as its vote was pushed to September.
