Crypto bank part-owned by Trump family offers depositors way to ‘gain favor’ with White House, experts say

Democrats have called World Liberty Financial Trust Company a stark example of corruption but officials claim there is no insider dealing Two fundamentals underpin the business model of a new crypto bank partly owned by the Trump family. The first is that there is almost no risk it can lose money, according to cryptocurrency experts – and the second, they say, is that the sole logical motivation for depositors to put in their funds is the prospect of a financial connection to a US president and his relatives. World Liberty Financial Trust Company received conditional approval this month from the US office of the comptroller of the currency (OCC) to start a bank. An entity affiliated with Donald Trump and his family members owns about 38% of the company. The agency is led by a political appointee of the US president. World Liberty is not really a bank, in the conventional sense: it won’t be lending money to businesses or individuals, issuing mortgage or credit cards, or getting federal insurance on deposits. What it will be able to do is directly issue the Trumps’ dollar-pegged stablecoin, USD1. Stablecoins, unlike other cryptocurrencies, are pegged at fixed values such as $1,