Trump-Backed World Liberty Financial Launches Crypto Lending Platform

Decentralized finance company World Liberty Financial—which is backed by U.S. President Donald Trump and his sons—launched a new lending and borrowing platform called World Liberty Markets, the firm announced on Monday. 

The platform is powered by multi-chain DEX protocol, Dolomite, and allows users to earn yield by lending assets or borrowing against their portfolio of assets—including World Liberty’s native token (WLFI), its dollar-backed stablecoin USD1, and USDC, USDT, Ethereum (ETH), and Coinbase’s Wrapped Bitcoin asset (cbBTC). 

“WLFI Markets is built to support the future of tokenized finance by providing access to third party and WLFI-branded real-world asset products, supporting new tokenized assets as they launch, and creating deeper and wider access to USD1 across all WLFI applications,” the firm posted on X. “It’s designed to provide future access to WLFI’s broader RWA roadmap.”

Since its launch early Monday, the platform has generated around $20 million in supplied assets, led by its USD1 stablecoin, which offers a 27% incentive rate as well as USD1 rewards points for those supplying at least $1,000. 

“A year ago, we set out to build a stablecoin that could compete with the biggest names in crypto, and USD1 has exceeded every expectation,” said World Liberty Financial co-founder and COO Zak Folkman in a statement. 

“Now we’re giving USD1 users access to even more ways to put their stablecoins to work,” he continued. “World Liberty Markets is a major step forward, and it’s just the first of many products we’re planning to roll out over the next 18 months.”

The platform exists as a web app at present time, but is expected to connect to the WLFI mobile app in the future. Additional asset support and incentive structures will be dictated by the platform’s users and WLFI token holders via decentralized governance votes.

World Liberty Financial launched its USD1 stablecoin across multiple blockchains in March last year. Since that time, it’s grown into the seventh-largest stablecoin with a circulating supply of more than $3.4 billion, according to data from DeFiLlama. 

The platform launched its native governance token, WLFI, in September. The token is up around 1.2% in the last 24 hours, recently changing hands just under $0.17. It is up 18% in the last two weeks, but still remains 49% off its all-time high mark of $0.33. 

The company, which has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and other critics thanks to its connections to the Trump family, boasts President Donald J. Trump as its “Co-Founder Emeritus.” The Trump family reduced its stake in the firm last June, but the president and his sons Eric, Don Jr., and Barron are still prominently featured on the company’s team page. 

Last week, World Liberty Financial applied for a national bank charter with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, joining crypto and stablecoin firms like Circle and Ripple who applied last year and were approved in December. 

A representative for World Liberty Financial did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.