The Most Controversial Bank Charter in American History Just Landed on the Crypto Industry's Doorstep
The president of the United States has a crypto business. That crypto business just got conditional approval to become a bank. And the regulator who approved it was appointed by the same president. This story is about a lot more than a stablecoin.
On August 17 2026 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Treasury Department's national bank regulator, granted conditional approval to World Liberty Trust Company to establish a bank charter, and in doing so produced what ABC News described as the first time in US history that a company owned by a sitting president's family has been granted bank status.
The business at the centre of this approval is World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. alongside Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, President Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, and two entrepreneurs named Chase Herro and Zak Folkman who have been central to the project's operations since its 2024 launch.
The company is 38 percent owned by an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members, according to the company's own website, and President Trump's financial disclosures show he made at least $1.4 billion on crypto ventures last year, placing World Liberty Financial at the intersection of presidential family wealth, regulatory oversight and the crypto industry's most active legislative and regulatory period in its history.
The bank charter matters practically because of what it allows World Liberty to do differently from what it has been doing.
Until now, World Liberty Financial has relied on BitGo, a third-party crypto company, to provide the stablecoin infrastructure behind its USD1 token. The bank charter would allow World Liberty Trust to bring USD1 issuance and reserve management in-house, eliminating the intermediary and capturing the fee revenue and operational control that currently flows to a third party, a move that would meaningfully improve the economics of the business for the Trump family at exactly the moment the stablecoin market is growing most rapidly.
The approval is conditional, not final, and Eric Trump agreed to limit his influence over World Liberty Financial's proposed national trust bank while the business works through the federal approval process, with Eric, co-founder Zak Folkman and Emirati investor Hamad Khalfan Ali Matar Alshamsi each signing separate commitments through companies connected to them, keeping all three investors away from bank management decisions during the review period.
The conflict of interest arguments that have surrounded World Liberty Financial since its launch have intensified with the bank charter news, and they deserve to be understood clearly because they are not simply partisan talking points but genuine structural concerns about the relationship between regulatory power and personal financial interest.
The OCC, which granted the conditional approval, was headed by a Trump-appointed official. The SEC, which published its proposed crypto rules on August 20, is chaired by Paul Atkins, also Trump-appointed. The GENIUS Act, which created the federal framework for payment stablecoins under which World Liberty's USD1 operates, was signed by President Trump in July 2025. The White House hosted a meeting with crypto executives, including those from Coinbase and Ripple, on August 19, the same day Bitcoin surged 8 percent.
Each of these things has an individually defensible explanation. Combined, they create an environment where a company 38 percent owned by entities affiliated with the sitting president is operating in an industry being actively shaped by regulators appointed by the same president, and where the most commercially beneficial outcomes for that company have materialised through the regulatory decisions of those same appointees.
Democratic lawmakers have described this as an unprecedented conflict of interest. The White House has not responded to requests for comment. World Liberty's spokesperson said critics are missing the point, that the company is running toward regulation and continuous oversight, not away from it, which is an argument that addresses the compliance question without touching the conflict of interest one.
The stablecoin market World Liberty is moving into has crossed $322 billion in total capitalisation and is growing rapidly toward the $2 trillion that Standard Chartered projects by 2028, meaning the stakes for who controls stablecoin issuance infrastructure are not trivial, and the family of the president who is simultaneously setting the regulatory framework for that market now has a bank charter that positions them to be a significant participant in it.
This is not simply a story about a crypto company. It is a story about the relationship between political power, regulatory authority and financial interest at a moment when crypto has moved from the edges of the financial system to its centre, and when the rules being written now will shape who benefits from that transition for years after the current administration ends.
The approval is conditional. The scrutiny is not.
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