World Liberty Financial USD (USD1) is a US dollar stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto company launched in 2024 whose public backers include President Donald Trump and his sons. Each USD1 is meant to be redeemable for one US dollar, and the reserves behind it are held in short-term US government debt, dollar deposits and cash equivalents. The token was announced in March 2025, with the custody firm BitGo handling issuance and reserves at launch.
USD1 is a separate asset from WLFI, World Liberty's governance token, and the two should not be confused. It competes with larger dollar stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USDC, and with newer corporate issues such as PayPal USD (PYUSD) and Ripple USD (RLUSD). Its links to a sitting president have made it one of the most politically scrutinised tokens in the market.
World Liberty Financial USD in plain terms
Think of a cloakroom ticket. You hand a dollar to the attendant, receive a ticket that says "one dollar", and can swap the ticket back for your dollar later. While the dollar sits in the cloakroom, the ticket can be passed from hand to hand, and whoever holds it can collect the money. USD1 is a digital version of that ticket, and it can move between people and apps on several blockchains within seconds.
The system only works if the cloakroom really holds a dollar for every ticket it has handed out. That is why stablecoin issuers publish regular reports from accountants describing what they hold. In USD1's case the dollars are mostly parked in very short-term loans to the US government, which pay interest. That interest goes to the issuer, not to the people holding the tickets.
History
World Liberty Financial announced USD1 on 25 March 2025, saying it would launch on the Ethereum Blockchain and on BNB Chain, the network whose native coin is BNB. The token gained attention on 1 May 2025, when Eric Trump and World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff said at the Token2049 conference in Dubai that MGX, an Abu Dhabi state-backed investment firm, would use USD1 to settle its previously announced $2 billion investment in the Binance exchange. Circulating supply passed $2 billion within weeks. Through 2025 USD1 was added to further networks, including Tron, Solana and, in October 2025, Aptos, and it was connected to other chains through Chainlink's cross-chain interoperability protocol.
How the peg and reserves work
USD1 is a fiat-backed stablecoin: new tokens are minted when approved customers deposit dollars and burned when they redeem, and World Liberty has said both are offered without fees. The reserves are held by BitGo's regulated trust company, and BitGo publishes monthly attestations in which an independent accounting firm examines the tokens outstanding and the assets backing them under AICPA criteria for fiat-pegged tokens. These are attestations, not full audits; see proof of reserves. The basic test of backing is the coverage ratio:
- is the coverage ratio; a value of at least 1 means every token is backed.
- is the dollar value of reserve assets such as Treasury bills, deposits and cash equivalents.
- is the number of USD1 tokens in circulation.
If reserves are worth $3,015 million and 3,000 million tokens are outstanding, then , so the token is fully backed with a small cushion. A ratio below 1, or doubts about whether reserves can be sold quickly, is what can cause a depeg.
Uses and distribution
- Trading collateral. Most USD1 has been used on centralized exchanges, above all Binance, where it is paired with other crypto assets.
- Large settlements. The MGX investment showed USD1 being used to move a multibillion-dollar payment on-chain.
- DeFi. USD1 is held in lending pools and liquidity pools on decentralized finance platforms on BNB Chain and other networks.
Bloomberg has reported that the large majority of USD1 in circulation sat in wallets linked to Binance, which means usage has been highly concentrated in a single venue.
Regulation and the trust charter
The GENIUS Act, signed into US law in July 2025, created a federal framework for payment stablecoins, requiring one-to-one reserves in safe assets and supervision of issuers. In early 2026 World Liberty applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter, and on 14 August 2026 the OCC granted conditional approval to World Liberty Trust Company. The trust company is meant to take over USD1 issuance, redemption, reserve management and custody from BitGo. Approval is not final: the company must meet pre-opening conditions, including holding at least $20 million in capital, and the OCC required passivity commitments from indirect investors in the holding company, one of them signed by Eric Trump. For the wider rules, see cryptocurrency regulation.
Criticism and conflict-of-interest questions
Critics, led by Democratic members of Congress, argue that a stablecoin linked to the president's family creates conflicts of interest, because the issuer earns interest on reserves while the government sets the rules for its industry. In May 2025 Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley wrote to World Liberty seeking records on the MGX deal, noting that Binance had pleaded guilty in 2023 to US anti-money laundering and sanctions violations. Scrutiny increased after President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in October 2025, and Senator Warren later urged the OCC not to approve the trust charter unless the president divested. World Liberty, Binance and members of the Trump family have rejected claims of improper dealing, and Binance has said it gave World Liberty no preferential treatment.