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The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a regulatory agency whose leader was chosen by President Donald Trump, granted preliminary approval on Friday to World Liberty Financial’s application for a federal bank charter.
World Liberty Financial is a crypto venture launched in 2024 by the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and several partners. The firm’s website states that WLF is 38% owned by “an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members.”
WLF for a U.S. bank charter in January, drawing alarm from lawmakers and watchdogs who said the review process would be rife with conflicts of interest. “We have never seen financial conflicts or corruption of this magnitude,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said at the time.
The OCC, headed by Jonathan Gould, announced the approval decision in a published Friday. WLF’s application was assessed by career OCC staff, the agency said.
“The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has reviewed your application to establish a new national trust bank, which will engage in operations of a trust company and activities related thereto, including fiduciary activities, with the title of World Liberty Trust Company, National Association,” the letter states. “The OCC hereby grants preliminary conditional approval of your charter application upon determining that your proposal meets certain regulatory and policy requirements.”
In response to the news, Warren wrote on social media that “this is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen.”
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Reuters reported that the charter, if finalized, would allow World Liberty’s “to directly issue its USD1 stablecoin, as well as custody the U.S. dollar assets backing it, both of which are now handled by a business partner, BitGo.”
“Hoping to capitalize on the Trump administration’s crypto-friendly stance, the industry has been knocking on the OCC’s door for such charters,” Reuters noted. “They allow crypto companies to hold assets on behalf of clients nationwide under a single federal charter, as well as to provide other settlement and asset servicing functions — making it easier to court major institutional clients. Other crypto firms, including Ripple and Circle, have received preliminary approval for such charters under Comptroller Jonathan Gould.”
World Liberty Financial welcomed the OCC’s preliminary approval as “a milestone in a multi-step chartering process.” The firm said in a press release that the newly formed bank’s board would be chaired by Zach Witkoff, the son of Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East.
Last year, Trump reaped around $527 million in proceeds from token sales by WLF, according to financial disclosures released in late June.
“They are making sure they are rich beyond their wildest dreams long after Trump departs the White House (if he departs the White House),” journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in response to the OCC decision. “It’s so openly and nakedly and obviously corrupt, I’m not sure it can be overstated.”
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