The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted preliminary conditional approval for a national trust bank charter to World Liberty Trust Company, N.A., an affiliate of the Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial. The approval, issued August 14 under OCC Corporate Decision #1385, follows an application filed January 7 and authorizes the entity to directly issue and redeem the USD1 stablecoin.
The charter is surgically narrow. World Liberty Trust Company can manage and hold customer assets, settle payments, and custody the reserves backing USD1 — but it cannot take deposits, make loans, or operate as a federally insured depository. It is not a bank under the Bank Holding Company Act, and it is not seeking a Federal Reserve master account. What it gets is the federal imprimatur of OCC supervision without the capital and liquidity requirements of a full commercial bank. The USD1 stablecoin, previously issued through BitGo Bank & Trust, will move under the new entity’s proprietary umbrella.
CoinDesk and Reuters reported the approval. The OCC imposed conditions including a $20 million minimum capital requirement, a qualified internal audit manager, and satisfaction of all preopening requirements before the bank can open. The OCC retains the right to modify, suspend, or rescind the conditional approval.
The ownership structure is what makes this charter a political event. World Liberty Financial is approximately 38% owned by an entity tied to Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump family members. The trust company’s president is Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, who serves as a presidential special envoy. Senator Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, called the approval “the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen,” adding that “President Trump is now the first President in history to approve, operate, and supervise his own bank.”
On August 15, Warren introduced the “Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act” with nine co-sponsors, including Senators Van Hollen, Alsobrooks, Murphy, Sanders, Blumenthal, Reed, Kim, Duckworth, and Gallego. The bill would prohibit the Fed, OCC, and FDIC from approving banking applications involving a president, vice president, members of Congress, or their immediate families.
World Liberty’s response frames the charter as a hedge against future political risk rather than a product of current political access. Spokesman David Wachsman told Newsweek the firm is “running towards regulation and continuous oversight.” The company maintains the charter ensures “robust and permanent OCC regulatory supervision that will outlast the Trump administration” — an argument that uses the permanence of federal oversight as a shield against the perception of political favoritism.
The structural question is whether a limited-purpose trust charter can serve as a stablecoin regulatory template. The model concentrates on custody, reserve management, and redemption mechanics while explicitly excluding the systemic risks of deposit-taking. For stablecoin issuers navigating the GENIUS Act’s emerging framework, a trust charter offers a path to federal legitimacy without the overhead of full banking regulation. Circle has pursued a different route — a national trust bank subsidiary through the OCC’s standard process — but the outcome here suggests the trust charter model may be more accessible than previously assumed.
The catch is that this particular trust charter is inseparable from its political context. Whether the “regulatory moat” it creates for USD1 is a genuine institutionalization of stablecoin infrastructure or a one-time artifact of political proximity depends on whether the model survives the legislative response now gathering around it.