Trump’s First 100 Days
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World Liberty Financial, the crypto business created by President Trump and his sons, unveiled a cryptocurrency called a stablecoin, furthering his ties to an industry his administration regulates.
David Yaffe-Bellany
Reporting from San Francisco
World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company started by Donald J. Trump and his sons, announced on Tuesday that it was planning to sell a digital currency called a stablecoin, deepening the president’s financial ties to crypto as his administration relaxes enforcement of the industry.
The stablecoin would be known as USD1, the company wrote in a social media post, without revealing when it would go on sale. Stablecoins, a popular form of cryptocurrency, are designed to maintain a constant value of $1, making them useful for many types of crypto transactions.
“No games. No gimmicks. Just real stability,” World Liberty posted on its X account.
The stablecoin is the fourth digital currency that Mr. Trump and his business partners have marketed to the public over the last year. World Liberty already offers a cryptocurrency called WLFI. This month, the company announced it had sold $550 million of those digital coins. A business entity linked to Mr. Trump receives a 75 percent cut of the sales.
Days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump also started selling a so-called memecoin — a type of digital currency based on an online joke or a celebrity mascot. Melania Trump put her own memecoin on the market that same weekend.
And in recent months, Mr. Trump has started incorporating crypto into his social media firm, Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social. Trump Media announced this week that it would work with Crypto.com, a digital currency trading platform, to offer investment products tied to crypto.
Mr. Trump’s aggressive forays into the crypto market have come at the same time that his administration eases enforcement of crypto companies and rolls back regulations. His efforts to profit from an industry that he oversees amount to an enormous conflict of interest, with virtually no precedent in American history, government ethics experts have said.
World Liberty’s stablecoin adds to that messy knot of business conflicts. Congress is considering legislation to regulate stablecoins that could reach Mr. Trump’s desk before the end of the year. In a speech at a crypto conference this month, Mr. Trump called for “simple, common-sense rules” for stablecoins, saying they would “expand the dominance of the U.S. dollar.”
Typically, stablecoins are backed by assets that the coin’s issuer holds in reserve. Every time users want to redeem a stablecoin, they can go to the issuer and exchange the digital coin for the cash equivalent.
In the announcement on Tuesday, World Liberty said it would back the stablecoin using short-term U.S. treasuries, dollar deposits and other cash equivalents.
“We’re offering a digital dollar stablecoin that sovereign investors and major institutions can confidently integrate into their strategies for seamless, secure cross-border transactions,” said Zach Witkoff, one of World Liberty’s founders and a son of Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s envoy to the Middle East.
The emphasis on international payments raises the prospect that foreign governments or business entities might use the coin to curry favor with Mr. Trump, said Corey Frayer, who worked on crypto policy at the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Biden administration.
“There’s a lot of opacity around this marketplace, and prior relationships with illicit finance,” Mr. Frayer said.
Once a crypto skeptic, Mr. Trump embraced digital currencies on the campaign trail last year, promising to turn the United States into “the crypto capital of the planet.” The industry spent tens of millions of dollars to back Mr. Trump and to finance congressional candidates who have spoken favorably about crypto.
In September, Mr. Trump started World Liberty alongside his three sons, Donald Jr., Eric and Barron, as well as Steve and Zach Witkoff. They entrusted the day-to-day operations of the business to two little-known entrepreneurs, Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, who have virtually no track record in the industry.
World Liberty initially promised to create a crypto platform that would allow users to borrow and lend in digital currencies. But so far, the company hasn’t introduced any products apart from WLFI and the stablecoin.
Over the past few months, the company has embarked on something of a buying spree, putting together a stockpile of cryptocurrencies that includes Ether as well as lesser-known coins like SUI and LINK.
On a recent panel, Mr. Herro said World Liberty was creating a “strategic reserve” of tokens. He didn’t explain the ultimate objective of the stockpile.
The idea had clear echoes of one of Mr. Trump’s initiatives in the White House — the creation of a U.S. stockpile of Bitcoin, which he announced in an executive order this month.
David Yaffe-Bellany writes about the crypto industry from San Francisco. He can be reached at davidyb@nytimes.com.
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