The OCC’s conditional approval would let a Trump-linked trust bank take over issuance of the $4 billion USD1 stablecoin from BitGo, drawing an immediate legislative response from Senate Democrats.
OCC Grants Preliminary Conditional Approval to World Liberty Trust Company, Clearing a Path to Take Over USD1 Issuance
Posted August 17, 2026 at 6:50 am EST.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval on Friday to World Liberty Trust Company, National Association, the national trust bank that Trump-backed World Liberty Financial created to bring its stablecoin under federal supervision. The decision lets the entity organize, not open.
The letter covers a bank based in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, and wholly owned by WLTC Holdings LLC. Its proposed activities are dollar-backed stablecoin issuance, redemption, and reserve maintenance in a nonfiduciary capacity, digital asset custody as a fiduciary, and conversion services for custody customers. The bank plans to issue USD1 to institutional clients nationwide, taking over from BitGo Bank & Trust, currently USD1’s exclusive issuer and custodian. Zachary Witkoff, World Liberty’s CEO and the son of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, is listed as an organizer, director, and president of the bank.
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The approval hands the federal banking system a supervisory relationship with a company the president’s family profits from, which is what Senate Democrats have spent months objecting to. Financial disclosures released in June showed Trump received millions of dollars connected to World Liberty Financial.
The approval expires if capital is not raised within 12 months or the bank does not open within 18 months. The OCC received seven comments from four commenters, several flagging conflicts of interest involving Trump, his family, and Emirati investors; the agency said career staff reviewed the application under delegated authority. Passivity commitments came from three investors, including DT Marks SC LLC, signed by Eric Trump as president.
World Liberty applied for the charter in January, drawing objections from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who asked Comptroller Jonathan Gould to halt the review until Trump divested. Gould, previously chief legal officer at Bitfury, has said crypto firms should have a path to federal supervision, and the OCC has issued similar conditional approvals to Coinbase, Paxos, BitGo, Ripple, and Circle. After Friday’s decision, Warren said she and other Democrats would introduce the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act, barring senior officials from owning or controlling a bank. Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Ruben Gallego, both central to Clarity Act negotiations, signed on.
Related Listen: Stripe Bid $53B for PayPal: Who Actually Wins Stablecoin Payments?
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
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