World Liberty Financial's WLFI Secures OCC Conditional Approval for Trust Bank With $20M Capital Requirement

WLFI News

World Liberty Financial, the Trump-family-backed crypto project behind the WLFI governance token, has received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to charter a national trust bank. The Aug. 14 decision covers World Liberty Trust Company, National Association, a Bay Harbor Islands, Florida subsidiary of Delaware-registered WLTC Holdings LLC. Once preopening requirements are completed under federal banking law, the bank plans to replace BitGo as issuer, reserve manager and custodian of the USD1 stablecoin, subject to final OCC authorization. The proposed trust bank would need to maintain at least $20 million in eligible capital, apply for stock in a Federal Reserve Bank and obtain written confirmation that all opening conditions have been met. Its charter would be limited to trust, custody, reserve and related payment services, not ordinary retail deposits or commercial lending. The OCC cited the National Bank Act and the GENIUS Act in concluding that national trust banks may issue payment stablecoins and hold digital assets in custody. After the decision, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and nine Democratic colleagues introduced the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act, which would bar a president, vice president, their spouses or their children from owning or controlling a bank.

Beyond the banking application, the project faces fresh political scrutiny over a Hong Kong-based artificial intelligence platform called WorldClaw. The platform lists 90 AI models, and 43 of them were developed by Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Baidu, Z.ai, DeepSeek and Moonshot. Some of those firms are already targeted by Washington. Z.ai is named on the U.S. Commerce Department's Entity List, while Alibaba and Baidu appear on the Defense Department's list of companies it says are linked to China's military. WorldClaw accepts USD1 as one of its payment methods, a design that connects AI usage directly to World Liberty's stablecoin ecosystem. The service is closer to a model gateway than to an AI trading bot, yet it points to a growing category of AI crypto wallet integrations where stablecoins become the default payment rail for AI tools. The arrangement has not been found to violate U.S. law, but it puts the administration's restrictions on Chinese technology in tension with a commercial structure that lets American users reach restricted models. The Trump family, which controls roughly 38% of World Liberty's equity, has financial exposure to the project; terms of the specific WorldClaw deal have not been disclosed.

The charter push is, at its core, an effort to place USD1 under one nationwide federal supervisor. A national trust bank charter would let World Liberty operate across all U.S. states without applying for separate money transmitter licenses, hold its reserve assets directly at the Federal Reserve, and bring issuance under regular OCC examination. Unlike algorithmic stablecoins, USD1 is designed as a dollar-pegged token with 1:1 backing of cash and short-term Treasury obligations. That structure is meant to compete with dominant dollar stablecoins by offering direct federal supervision of the issuing entity. The OCC's conditional approval is not a final license; World Liberty must complete preopening work and receive the agency's written authorization before it can issue USD1 or take custody of client assets. The same path was followed by Circle, which moved from conditional approval to final authorization in July. For holders of the WLFI token, full approval would strengthen the regulatory standing of the whole World Liberty ecosystem. The OCC added that uninsured national trust banks under its supervision held $7.2 trillion in assets under administration as of March 31, including $1.7 trillion in custody and safekeeping accounts, giving a sense of the regulated scale the project is trying to enter.

The common thread across these developments is World Liberty's attempt to turn USD1 into a federally supervised banking product while ownership questions remain unresolved. The OCC's charter licensing decision, the primary-source document, states that preliminary approval only permits organizing the bank and does not allow operations to begin. It binds World Liberty Trust to the $20 million capital floor, Federal Reserve membership, and a Regulation W exemption covering the BitGo reserve transfer; it also records investor commitments from StringZ Holdings, DT Marks SC and AMGUS not to influence bank operations. Financial terms of the WorldClaw partnership remain undisclosed, and the Senate bill, if enacted, could force regulators to revisit approvals reached after Jan. 20, 2025.