Trump-backed World Liberty moves into crypto lending as USD1 climbs stablecoin ranks

Trump-backed crypto project World Liberty Financial has launched its first lending and borrowing product, moving into crypto credit markets as its USD1 stablecoin grows into one of the largest dollar-backed tokens in circulation.

The new platform, called World Liberty Markets, is being powered by Dolomite and allows users to lend and borrow digital assets using USD1 alongside other supported collateral, including ether, USDC, USDT, and tokenized bitcoin. 

World Liberty Markets marks the project’s second major product, following the launch of its USD1 stablecoin in March 2025. USD1 now has a market capitalization just shy of $3.5 billion, according to The Block data, placing it just behind PayPal’s PYUSD among the largest dollar-backed stablecoins.

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The lending rollout comes as World Liberty works to formalize its stablecoin operations in the U.S. Last week, an affiliated entity applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a national trust bank focused on stablecoin issuance, custody, and conversion. It's a move that would bring USD1 fully under federal supervision if approved.

The timing of the lending launch also aligns with a broader recovery in crypto credit markets. A November report from Galaxy Digital found that active DeFi loans climbed to nearly $41 billion by the end of the third quarter of 2025, helping push total crypto lending across centralized and decentralized platforms to a new all-time high of roughly $74 billion.

Two World Liberty executives, Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, co-founded an Ethereum-based lending protocol built around Aave V3 infrastructure called Dough Finance, which suffered a flash loan hack in 2024. Dolomite and Aave are competitors in the crypto credit space.

Conflict concerns

World Liberty lists Donald Trump and his sons as co-founders, a structure that has drawn growing scrutiny from critics who argue the project represents a potential conflict of interest for a sitting president. 

According to a Reuters investigation from October, the Trump family earned hundreds of millions of dollars from World Liberty Financial and related token sales in the first half of 2025, with roughly $463 million attributable to World Liberty's native WLFI token sales alone and total crypto income exceeding $800 million during that period across Trump-linked ventures.

These figures dwarf income from traditional business lines like golf clubs and licensing and come on top of earlier disclosures showing the president earned 10s of millions from WLFI sales in 2024.

World Liberty contends that Trump and his family do not manage day-to-day operations, which are run by crypto-native executives, and that its governance structure is designed to limit direct influence.