World Liberty Financial rolled out World Liberty Markets, a decentralized lending app, extending on-chain lending and borrowing for its USD1 stablecoin and other tokens. The move is aimed at increasing USD1’s real-world utility but lands amid heavy market volatility and regulatory scrutiny.
World Liberty Markets began operations on Jan. 12, built on the Dolomite protocol and designed to let users supply assets to earn yield or post collateral to borrow. Initial market data showed USD1 lending and borrowing activity across multiple assets, with observed borrowing costs near 0.83% and lending yields roughly 0.08%, though those rates are subject to rapid change with liquidity flows.
USD1, launched in March 2025, is presented as a dollar‑pegged stablecoin backed by short‑term U.S. treasuries, dollar deposits and equivalent cash holdings, with custody by BitGo and monthly attestations, according to market reports. The stablecoin had achieved significant distribution by early 2026, with circulating supply figures cited near 3.4 billion and market-cap estimates in the range of $3.5 billion.
The WLFI governance token has seen pronounced volatility since its Sept. 1, 2025 public debut. Trading volume in the first 24 hours reached about $4.7 billion and the token swung sharply: early gains gave way to a decline to roughly $0.21, an 82% drop from a September peak to an October low of $0.09, then a recovery of about 86% from that October trough.
Community governance moved the token to tradable status in a July 16, 2025 vote that passed with overwhelming support, and the issuer has announced $10 million buyback and burn measures to support price stability.
Political exposure, controversies and regulatory risk
The Trump family’s financial involvement is a defining feature of World Liberty Financial and has intensified scrutiny. Reporting indicates the family earned hundreds of millions from crypto activities in 2025, with some analyses estimating cumulative WLFI proceeds and related holdings in excess of $1.1 billion and other stakes valued up to $1.5 billion.
Those ties have prompted public criticism from lawmakers and monitoring by federal authorities, and the company’s application for a federal banking charter is under close review.
Operationally, the project has faced allegations ranging from hacks to disputes with other protocol actors, legal claims involving advisors and actions to police unofficial third‑party projects. C
Investors are now turning their attention to the outcome of the OCC review of WLF’s banking charter application and to the company’s planned product rollouts — notably a forthcoming debit card and tokenization of real‑world assets such as oil, gas, cotton and timber — which will test USD1’s broader adoption and the project’s exposure to regulatory and market pressures.
