Trump-linked stablecoin used for bonus payouts at White House UFC contest

USD1, the stablecoin issued by the Trump family's crypto venture World Liberty Financial, has gone from locking retail depositors out of a DeFi lending pool to being used to pay fighters on the White House lawn.

The UFC said Friday that World Liberty Financial would serve as the presenting partner of a $250,000 performance bonus pool at UFC Freedom 250, a mixed martial arts contest held on the south lawn of the presidential residence on Sunday, June 14, President Donald Trump's 80th birthday. The bonuses were paid out in USD1 to fighters across seven matches.

The awards are among the most prominent commercial deployments of USD1 to date.

The visibility push comes months after CoinDesk reported on a borrowing controversy that briefly hit prices of WLFI, World Liberty Financial's token, and rattled the project's sentiment in social circles.

The company had borrowed more than $75 million in stablecoins from Dolomite, a DeFi lending protocol whose co-founder Corey Caplan advises WLFI, using 3 billion of its own WLFI governance tokens as collateral and depositing its own USD1 as part of the arrangement.

The borrowing pushed the USD1 pool to 93% utilization, meaning retail depositors who had lent USD1 to the pool expecting to withdraw at will could not do so until the loans were repaid. WLFI repaid $25 million of the position, then minted $25 million in fresh USD1 days later, actively managing the token's supply through April. World Liberty Financial did not respond to a request for comment on the report.

World Liberty is also in litigation with Justin Sun, the crypto tycoon and early buyer of WLFI governance tokens, who sued the company, alleging it improperly froze his holdings. WLFI countersued for defamation.

Some observers said the commercial impact of Sunday's event is straightforward.

"Paying the fighters in the USD1 stablecoin would have the same economic function as writing them a check," Todd Phillips, a crypto expert at the Klaros Group, told The Guardian. "Announcing to the world they are doing it in USD1 sounds like they are advertising to the world that USD1 is out there and that it is connected to the UFC and the White House."

USD1's circulating supply has grown to around $4.6 billion from $3.3 billion on Jan. 1.

The company has also applied for a banking license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Trump's financial disclosure lists his stake in World Liberty Financial at over $50 million. The administration maintains that there is no conflict of interest and that Trump's assets are managed by a trust run by his children.