The announcement comes at a time when two landmark stablecoin bills are making their way through Congress.
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) announced plans to launch a USD stablecoin dubbed “USD1” in a post on Tuesday.
The Trump-backed crypto project, which touts itself as a “pioneering DeFi protocol and governance platform” recently closed two token sales that raised a total of $550 million. According to the project website, 75% of all WLFI token sale proceeds go to a Trump company called DT Marks DEFI LLC.
Last week, President Donald Trump highlighted stablecoin legislation currently making its way through Congress. He spoke favorably about the asset class, describing stablecoins as a tool to augment the status of the U.S. dollar. “With the dollar-backed stablecoins, you’ll help expand the dominance of the U.S. dollar,” Trump said at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit last Thursday.
Perhaps the president’s remarks were the perfect setup for WLFI’s announcement, which will see the creation of yet another stablecoin that the firm says will be “100% backed by short-term U.S. government treasuries, U.S. dollar deposits, and other cash equivalents” and will follow a “conservative approach.” There are already more than 200 stablecoins with a total market capitalization of just under $250 billion, according to data from Coinmarketcap.
“USD1 provides what algorithmic and anonymous crypto projects cannot: access to the power of [decentralized finance] DeFi underpinned by the credibility and safeguards of the most respected names in traditional finance,” said WLFI co-founder Zach Witkoff.
The new asset will trade on a 1:1 basis with the U.S. dollar like other stablecoins and WFLI says USD1 will be audited regularly. It will initially launch on the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain networks, although no official launch date has been released.