OCC clears World Liberty to hold its own USD1 reserves, taking BitGo's job in-house

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has conditionally approved World Liberty Trust Company's application for a national trust bank charter, according to a Reuters report carried by mezha.net ^[1]. The structural consequence is the point: if World Liberty meets the OCC's conditions, it can issue the USD1 stablecoin itself and hold the dollar reserves backing it, work its partner BitGo performs today ^[2].

A national trust charter is a narrow instrument. It lets the bank hold and manage client assets and speed up settlement, but it does not permit deposit-taking or lending as a conventional bank would ^[3][4]. What it does buy is reach: a single federal license to handle client assets across the United States, which simplifies settlement and asset servicing for large institutional clients ^[5]. That is the template other issuers will read closely. Zach Witkoff, president and chairman of World Liberty Trust, said the structure puts USD1 issuance, asset custody and reserve management under OCC supervision and examination to the same standards long applied to banks, and welcomed continuing federal oversight ^[6]. Stripped of the framing, it is vertical integration with an examiner attached, and it removes a third-party custodian from the reserve chain. The report does not describe what, if anything, remains of the BitGo arrangement.

The conditions are not trivial for a startup balance sheet. World Liberty Trust must notify the OCC of material changes to its business plan, maintain capital of at least 20 million dollars, and hire a qualified head of internal audit ^[7]. Preliminary approvals of similar charters have already gone to Ripple and Circle under Comptroller Jonathan Gould ^[8], whom President Trump appointed last year ^[9]. USD1 has become one of the largest stablecoins ^[10].

The governance file is where this gets contested. The OCC received comments about World Liberty Financial's non-US investors and said those investors were not treated as principal shareholders of the bank ^[11]. Several investors, including foreign ones, signed commitments not to seek control of the bank or influence its operating decisions, among them Eric Trump, signing as president of a Trump family investment entity ^[12]. In February, two Senate Banking Committee Democrats asked the Treasury Secretary to assess possible national security risks tied to reports of a 500 million dollar stake purchase in World Liberty Financial connected to a deal involving the United Arab Emirates national security adviser ^[13]. The OCC sits inside Treasury and, unlike many financial regulators, has no bipartisan board ^[14]; Democrats have said granting the license could create a substantial conflict of interest ^[15]. In its conditional approval letter the OCC said Gould and its staff acted in line with their legal and ethical obligations, that career staff reviewed the application, and that nonpolitical examiners will supervise the bank ^[16].

The people are the other reason this is not an ordinary charter. Zach Witkoff, chief executive of World Liberty Financial, is the son of Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff ^[17][18]. Robert Witkoff, Steve Witkoff's brother and a former insurance executive, is set to join the trust's board, as is Scott Alper, president of the Witkoff family real estate business ^[19]. That is three named leadership or board figures tied to one family or its businesses ^[20]. The Witkoff family, Trump and three of his sons were among World Liberty Financial's co-founders in late 2024 ^[21].

Watch three things: whether the 20 million dollar capital condition and the internal audit hire are met, and on what timetable; whether Ripple's and Circle's charters convert to final approvals first, setting the operating precedent; and whether the February Senate inquiry produces any Treasury assessment that touches the ownership commitments the OCC accepted.