The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the U.S. banking regulator, granted preliminary conditional approval on Friday (14) to World Liberty Financial (WLF), a cryptocurrency company linked to President Donald Trump and partly led by his sons.
Under the OCC's decision, WLF plans to issue and redeem dollar-pegged stablecoins and hold the assets backing them in a non-fiduciary capacity. The company would also be allowed to provide fiduciary digital asset custody services and offer asset conversion services to custody clients. The charter does not authorize WLF to make loans or accept deposits directly from customers.
Lawmakers react
The approval comes amid an ongoing debate over the president's business interests and the regulation of the cryptocurrency industry. Democrats have pushed to include a provision in the CLARITY Act that would prevent public officials from profiting from the sector while in office.
In a financial disclosure released in June, Trump reported receiving more than US$1.1 billion last year from cryptocurrency-related ventures.
In a social media post on Friday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) described the OCC's decision as "the most shameless act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen" and said she plans to introduce legislation aimed at blocking what she called a "sweetheart deal."
Warren argued that the approval gives broad regulatory privileges to a business tied to Trump while creating opportunities for him and his partners to benefit financially from government-related activity.
The WLF decision comes as the OCC moves to increase the number of new bank charters it approves, including applications from cryptocurrency companies.
OCC expands bank charter approvals
"The OCC is open for business again," Acting Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould told the House Financial Services Committee in June. According to Gould, the agency received as many charter applications in 2025 alone as it had during the previous four years combined.
Last week, the OCC said it was continuing efforts to revive the issuance of new bank charters after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced similar measures. The regulator noted that, between 2011 and 2024, there were three years in which it received no charter applications. It now generally aims to decide on applications within 120 days of receiving them.
In a statement, Gould said the issuance of new bank charters is "a sign of a healthy banking system." He added that the FDIC's revised process for reviewing deposit insurance applications is aligned with the OCC's effort to reverse the decline in new charters by providing a clearer and more transparent path for new entrants to the banking system.
