Eric Trump agrees in black and white not to have his hands in the management of the future deposit bank of World Liberty Financial. On paper, a gesture of regulatory goodwill. In fact, a file which already has its share of gray areas… Between ongoing crypto trials, loans bringing back bad memories and criticism coming from all political sides.
In brief
- Eric Trump, Zak Folkman and an Emirati investor agree to stay away from the management of the future World Liberty Financial bank.
- Justin Sun accuses World Liberty of having frozen its tokens and blocked its voting rights; the case remains in federal court.
- The OCC has already validated similar charters for Ripple, Paxos, Fidelity and Coinbase, a sign of an assumed pro-crypto turn.
Crypto: Eric Trump agrees to kneel before regulators
Eric Trump, the co-founder of World Liberty Zak Folkman, and the Emirati investor Hamad Khalfan Ali Matar Alshamsi have each agreed, through companies linked to them, to stay away from management decisions of the group’s future federal deposit bank. The technical term is “passivity commitment”a commitment to non-control.
These agreements were made public as World Liberty has just obtained its preliminary approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. If the federal charter is therefore validated, the company could hold internally the reserves of its stablecoin USD1 which amounts to nearly 4 billion dollars in capitalization, rather than depending on a third party for that. For World Liberty spokesperson David Wachsman, the intention behind this maneuver is that the company intends to remain under federal supervision for years.
The lawsuit hanging over the entire World Liberty Financial operation
World Liberty Financial’s Commitment to Transparency falls precisely at a time when the company is dragging behind it a heavy legal case which is damaging its image. Justin Sun, the founder of Tron and the project’s largest external investor with $75 million injected, filed a complaint in April against World Liberty. The company would have:
- Frozen all of its tokens;
- Deprived of voting rights in governance;
- Threatened to permanently destroy his assets.
World Liberty countersued, of course, with a defamation suit, accusing Justin Sun of orchestrating a smear campaign after himself breaching his contractual commitments. Both proceedings are still ongoing and a federal judge has even refused to send Sun’s case to a private arbitration court.
Another detail fueling doubts is an investigation published in April which reveals that World Liberty had deposited 5 billion of its own WLFI tokens on the Dolomite lending platform, as collateral, to borrow around $75 million in stablecoins. The process has an air of déjà vu for anyone who followed the fall of FTX… Using your own token as collateral to raise funds… a circular leverage scheme that several observers have deemed risky. Which fueled public criticism from all sides. Notably Hunter Biden, who today denounces what he describes as a blatant conflict of interest.
The regulatory climate becoming pro-crypto in the United States?
This World Liberty issue is not being played out in a vacuum because the current Comptroller of the Currency, Jonathan Gould, seems to have made the approval of new banking charters one of his stated priorities. A clear shift compared to the previous administration, which was profoundly more cautious in the face of demands from the crypto sector. Ripple, Paxos and Fidelity Digital Assets also won similar conditional approvals in 2025. Coinbase followed earlier this year.
In other words, the climate has reversed. What was the exception two years ago is almost the norm today for the big names in crypto who are aiming for a federal banking charter. Recently, it was Donald Trump himself who received the leaders of several crypto companies at the White House, while the SEC was simultaneously finalizing a broader regulatory framework for the entire sector.
The non-control undertaking signed by Eric Trump for World Liberty Financial meets on paper the requirements of federal regulators. But between a Justin Sun lawsuit still pending, a loan reminiscent of FTX’s worst hours, and family financial ties never completely dissipated… The promise to stay ” passive “ struggles to erase the questions that persist.
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