In the almost year and a half since returning to the presidency, Donald Trump has found plenty of ways to enrich himself and his family and friends. But one scheme in particular, a cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial, is the gift that just keeps on giving.
Trump, along with his real-estate-buddy-turned-diplomat Steve Witkoff and both his and Witkoff’s sons, launched World Liberty a few months before the 2024 election.
Then, earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that a member of the United Arab Emirates royal family had acquired a 49 percent stake in the company just days before Trump was inaugurated, netting the Trump family at least $187 million.
Now, World Liberty is on the verge of being approved for a national trust bank charter, NOTUS reported last week. If it goes through, the company would be able to issue its USD1 “stablecoin” — a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar — more freely, without having to go through a cryptocurrency exchange. And, of course, the Trump family would receive a cut through transaction fees.
In addition to the straightforward potential for presidential self-enrichment, critics argue that the charter application itself is a conflict of interest; the application is being reviewed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, whose leadership is appointed by the president. (Trump has said he is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, while Witkoff has divested outright.)
It’s all fairly complex — so to sort through what we know about Trump’s crypto enterprise and where it could be headed next, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Zach Everson of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. Everson is research director of the group’s Trump Accountability Project.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Zach, you’ve followed the Trump crypto business. What is happening here?
What we’re seeing here is making what happened in [Trump’s] first term look ethical. There are essentially three steps: First, in September 2024, shortly before the election, the Trumps and the Witkoffs launched World Liberty Financial. Second, they came out with two products for World Liberty Financial: a “stablecoin” and a crypto token.
Now what they need is the banking authority so that they can cut down on the fees that they have to pay outside sources, they can increase the fees that they make, and they can also centralize all regulation under the federal government.
What is the Trump stablecoin and who has invested in it?
USD1 is a stablecoin, which is crypto. It means it is backed one-to-one by reserves. Think of it as a bank loan, only going the opposite way. You are giving money to World Liberty Financial. You’re giving US dollars and they’re giving you this virtual currency. And the whole time that they’re sitting on your US dollars, they’re investing them in Treasuries and they are keeping the interest.
In spring of 2025 it was announced that an investment firm backed by the national security adviser of the UAE had purchased $2 billion of these magic beans using US dollars and was investing them in [the crypto exchange] Binance. It went from nothing to all of a sudden being one of the most popular stablecoins out there, by way of the UAE national security adviser directing this money towards them.
That’s a lot of what this banking trust license would allow them to do. Right now, the reserves have to be held someplace else — they can’t hold their own reserves. Similarly, they can’t issue their own [crypto] coin in the United States. It has to be done elsewhere. If this trust gets approved, which we believe it’s going to be soon, that would allow them to essentially collect more fees in direct transactions and take out some middlemen in transactions they already have going on.
Donald Trump has World Liberty Financial, this token, and he’s got this stablecoin. How would this transition into becoming more of a traditional bank?
Public Citizen and other groups have long been concerned about regulatory capture. That’s when the lobbyist or the business interests come into government and they take control of the agency that oversees their former employer.
This is regulatory capture to the extreme, where they’re applying for a banking license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. And that is part of the Treasury, which is under Donald Trump’s administration. So here you have World Liberty Financial to be regulated by an agency of the US government that is under Donald Trump’s control.
And someone who answers to the president of the United States will decide whether his financial firm, World Liberty Financial, gets to have these banking privileges.
Exactly. And another benefit of this that ties into the administration is if this does get approved for this license, it will fall under federal regulators, not state regulators. This puts his World Liberty Financial in the purview of a federal agency, which appears that it would make it a lot harder for states to try to get in there and push back on this.
What are the potential conflicts of interest here?
Everything. Everything. You’ve got an issue where we have a foreign government investing in this. Another firm backed by the UAE’s national security adviser also owns 49 percent of World Liberty Financial, something the American people didn’t find out about until a year after it took place. We heard a lot in the first term about foreign emoluments. There were all sorts of concerns about foreign governments buying rooms and drinks at his hotel holding banquets.
Here, you’ve got hundreds of millions of dollars going to Donald Trump and his business partners right before he became president. So if you have concerns, as the Constitution does, about the United States president accepting payments from foreign powers, this one seems to be a massive one.
Is there something to “Trump has this long history of grift,” where people just look the other way at this massive grift?
When he first came in and had that DC hotel and the golf clubs, I thought people were like, well, it’s Donald Trump. Of course he’s going to do this sort of stuff. I think that’s the advantage that Donald Trump has long had is that people have known him for decades. And he’s always been like this. So what are you expecting?
According to Forbes, Eric Trump’s net worth has shot up from $40 million before his dad was elected to $400 million. Donald Trump, Jr. went from $50 million to $300 million. Barron Trump? College student? He’s doing all right. He’s worth about $150 million. These are massive amounts of money. And a lot of that has come through World Liberty Financial.
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