Trump’s USD1 Gets Banking Upgrade as World Liberty Files For National Trust Charter

Trump’s World Liberty Financial is taking the first step in acquiring a national bank trust charter. This is happening at a time when the company is trying to encourage the use of its USD1 stablecoin.

USD1 Moves Closer to Broad Adoption After World Liberty Financial’s Charter Bid

The Company confirmed it has established a new entity called WLTC Holdings LLC and filed a de novo application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to become a federally chartered national trust bank.

The proposed charter would enable the trust to regulate issuance, custody, and conversion in one regime. In the middle of it all is the USD1, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and launched by the project.

Zach Witkoff, who will be the president and chairman of the trust entity, noted that institutional adoption of the stablecoin has picked up for payments and treasuries.

“Institutions are already using USD1 for cross-border payments, settlement, and treasury operations. A national trust charter will allow us to bring issuance, custody, and conversion together as a full-stack offering under one highly regulated entity,” he shared.

The filing puts World Liberty Financial in a growing list of crypto companies in pursuit of federal trust charters. In December, the OCC gave conditional approvals to major digital asset companies including Circle and Ripple.

Regarding the organizational form, the trust bank would operate under the GENIUS Act and function with an advanced anti-money laundering and sanctions screening.

The filing said it would focus on core services, which include the issuance and redemption of stablecoins and the custody of USD1 and other stablecoins.

WLFI’s Ecosystem Set to Expand Beyond Payments

The stablecoin has continued to gather momentum over the past few months. This has especially been the case with the stablecoin reaching a new milestone in market cap back in December due to a heightened interest for promotional events conducted on major exchanges.

In addition to payments, World Liberty Financial shared plans to link its stablecoin infrastructure to tokenized versions of real-life assets. These projects involved the tokenization of commodity sectors such as oil and gas.

These plans were then verified in December as executives announced that a range of real-world asset products are due to launch early next year. This will be used to collateralize its USD1 stablecoin.

On the other hand, the project has also proposed yet another plan that involves the use of a portion of the WLFI treasury in the deployment of the stablecoin. The aim of the move is to promote the use of the stablecoin on the centralized and the decentralized platforms.