Central banking digital currencies have become passe. Stablecoins are here to stay.
In my previous article, I focused on the momentum of change at the regulatory level for digital assets and the mounting pressure on traditional trust banks to take custody of them. Those changes were dramatic. They’re now becoming paradigmatic even in the strictest definition of that term. Central banking digital currencies have become passe. Stablecoins are here to stay.
I’ll now focus on that breakaway period for stablecoins after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act of 2025 (GENIUS) Act, particularly on new national trust charter applications and approvals and how they revolve around one entity: World Liberty Financial International. WLFI is a digital asset company created by the Trump family in late 2024. It launched USD1, a stablecoin pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar, by U.S. Treasury Bills, designed to function as a private digital dollar anywhere in the world. The revenues flow, by contract, to a Trump-affiliated entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC.
Private Monetary System
WLFI, since its formation, has shown a rapid directional growth toward catalyzing the formation of an opaque new financial payments structure. Accompanied by both appointments at the director level of adjacent federal oversight institutions and dramatic federal legislation, the scope and pace of change have been driven by President Donald Trump. In parallel, segments of the digital asset business community moved forward through various conferences, new companies, partnerships and product developments that strengthened WLFI's specific directional growth.
USD1 settled its transactions on Tether, the builders of the world’s largest unregulated dollar issuer via USDT, another stablecoin. The GENUIS Act provides the regulatory framework legitimizing stablecoin issuers.
A private monetary system now sits between the Federal Reserve and the circulation of digital dollars. A single company, Tether, controls its infrastructure. It carries dollars under one federal regulatory frame and physical gold, classed as a commodity, for another. It’s legally constructed, politically protected and operating right now. Filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, blessed by the GENIUS Act and announced in press releases about financial information, the symmetry of this opaque structure is now an elegant, globally capable parallel system.
Developments Between October 2025 and March 2026
The integration, focus and rapidity of legislation surrounding stablecoins, trust banks and integration into payment pathways with legal clarity happened on the heels of the GENIUS Act. Here are some samples of those changes:
In December 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved national trust charters for five digital asset firms: Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos.
In December 2025, USD1 announced deployment on the Canton Network, an institutional blockchain. Its working group includes Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, NP Paribas, HSBC and Broadridge. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, the entity that settles the overwhelming majority of security transactions in the United States, is moving towards tokenizing Treasury securities on Canton. Broadridge’s distributed ledger processed $384.9 billion in transactions in December 2025.
World Liberty Trust Company filed for a national trust charter on Jan. 5, 2026.
Morgan Stanley filed for a national trust charter on Feb. 18, 2026.
These latter two developments indicate the continued growth of digital assets and the emergence of new trust charters in this new regulatory environment, created specifically to enable this.
An Under-Regulated Security
After the launch of USD1 and the passage of the GENIUS Act, the U.S. Senate voted to pass H.R. 6644, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. The final section of that bill, 99% of which pertained to housing supply, prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency until 2030. The House is preparing to push to make that prohibition permanent. As a result, they’re bypassing competition and ensuring there’s no federal version (CBDC) that competes with the stablecoin regime.
On March 11, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission signed a formal memorandum of understanding for the Harmonization Initiative (which focuses on strengthening the regulatory framework of U.S. financial markets by coordinating seamlessly, reducing duplicative regulation and providing markets with clarity). This is the first formal coordination between the two agencies on digital asset regulation. Four days later, both agencies issued a legal interpretation of federal securities laws that apply to digital assets. That document created a formal taxonomy for digital assets and separates stablecoins from securities under a lighter regulatory framework.
There’s no longer an argument to be made that a stablecoin is an unregulated security. The clarity seems to be that stablecoins are now an under-regulated security.
Actual and Trending Implications
WLFI continues to expand its connectivity and reach. By submitting an application for a trust company charter (called World Liberty Trust Company) under the aegis of both the acting president and the WLF partner-companies, a real shift in domestic banking is gaining mass and momentum.
The American Bank Association stood up for traditional banking on these issues as evidenced by its rejection, on March 5, of the White House’s compromise on stablecoin legislation. The specific objection concerned yield-bearing stablecoins. Estimates indicate that such instruments could redirect up to one trillion dollars away from traditional banks by 2028.
Whether or not digital assets, particularly stablecoins, constitute good policy or a true store of wealth, banks are fast having to choose how to adapt and determine how much lobbying clout is necessary to maintain a level playing field of equal regulatory exposure. What this change means is that the nature of the question for trustees and trust banks is no longer “can we hold digital assets in trust, and, if so, how?” The trend line indicates a broader banking and regulatory question: “If we’re regulated, why aren’t they?” Given what’s happened this year, the answer to that question points strongly to “because, in this administration, you don’t have the same leverage you had before.”
If the pace of change in the first quarter of 2026 is a reliable indicator for the rest of the year, executive teams and boards of traditional trust banks may soon need a new frame of reference to incorporate what the near-term future of the industry may be.