# World Liberty Financial

Updated: September 5, 2026

> World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is a private DeFi venture publicly tied to the family of the sitting US president, under whose brand the USD1 stablecoin is issued. Publicly unveiled in September 2024; actual USD1 issuance runs through BitGo Trust Company. An affiliated entity is pursuing its own OCC national trust charter for a bank named World Liberty Trust Company.

- **Jurisdiction**: United States (World Liberty Financial LLC, Florida; holding company WLTC Holdings LLC, Delaware)
- **Founded**: publicly unveiled September 17, 2024
- **Leadership**: no traditional CEO; Donald Trump is "Chief Crypto Advocate"; Zach Witkoff is president and chairman of World Liberty Trust Company
- **Issues**: USD1 (issuance via BitGo Trust Company); the WLFI governance token
- **Licence**: OCC trust charter application (World Liberty Trust Company, N.A.) — preliminary approval August 15, 2026
- **Attestation**: Crowe LLP, monthly (for USD1)
- **Ownership**: privately held

## Structure and leadership

The project was publicly announced by Donald Trump on September 17, 2024; per investigative reporting, its co-founders and operating leads are Zach Folkman and Chase Herro (who previously ran the DeFi protocol Dough Finance, shut down after a $2.1 million exploit in July 2024), along with Zach and Alex Witkoff, sons of US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The company has no formal CEO title: Donald Trump is styled "Chief Crypto Advocate," Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are "Web3 Ambassadors," and Barron Trump is "DeFi Visionary"; the closest thing to an operating executive is Zach Witkoff, president and chairman of the board of World Liberty Trust Company. Legally the company is organized as conventional corporate entities — World Liberty Financial LLC (Florida) as the operating unit and WLTC Holdings LLC (Delaware) as the holding company for the new banking subsidiary — not as a DAO.

## Products

The company's flagship branded product is the USD1 stablecoin (see the separate profile), whose actual issuance and redemption run through BitGo Trust Company. WLFI also issues its own governance token, WLFI, sold publicly; per a calculation based on the sale structure, an entity linked to the Trump family (DT Marks DEFI LLC, 70% owned by Trump) received 22.5 billion WLFI tokens out of an initial 100 billion supply.

## Regulation and conflict of interest

In January 2026, WLTC Holdings applied for an OCC national trust charter for a bank named World Liberty Trust Company, N.A., headquartered in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida; on August 15, 2026, the OCC granted preliminary conditional approval, with a $20 million minimum capital requirement as a pre-opening condition. That same August, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley, on behalf of the Senate Banking Committee minority, sent Zach Witkoff a letter requesting records on a $2 billion deal between the UAE state-linked fund MGX and the exchange Binance, settled in USD1; per a financial disclosure released in June 2025, Donald Trump's personal earnings from the company were valued at $57.4 million at that time. Details of the deal itself and the company's response are covered in the USD1 article.

## Sources

- [DL News, investigation into World Liberty Financial's operators](https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/meet-the-operators-of-donald-trump-world-liberty-financial/)
- [Blockworks, World Liberty Financial structure filing](https://blockworks.com/token-transparency/filing/world-liberty-financial)
- [Crowdfund Insider, on the OCC's preliminary approval (August 2026)](https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2026/08/297127-world-liberty-trust-company-secures-preliminary-conditional-approval-for-national-trust-bank-charter-from-occ/)
- [US Senate Banking Committee (minority), letter from Warren and Merkley on the MGX/Binance deal](https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/warren-merkley-seek-world-liberty-financial-records-on-2-billion-trump-stablecoin-deal-involving-uae-firm-and-binance)
- [Forbes, on Donald Trump's earnings from World Liberty Financial per financial disclosure](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/06/14/trump-world-liberty-financial-crypto-earnings-financial-disclosure/)

Canonical: https://stblcns.xyz/en/wiki/stablecoins/world-liberty-financial