Trump-linked crypto bank gains preliminary US approval with Abu Dhabi backing
Macro & Markets ·
A national trust bank tied to World Liberty Financial has received preliminary conditional approval, with Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan holding a 49% stake in the bank's holding company.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted the preliminary conditional approval this month, according to wublockchain.xyz, clearing the way for the bank to operate as a national trust institution. The approval would allow the entity to issue a USD-pegged stablecoin, positioning it within the growing field of dollar-backed digital tokens now moving through the US regulatory system.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, along with co-investors, is described as a major shareholder behind the bank's parent company, holding the 49% stake. A Trump-affiliated entity holds a separate 38% stake in the same holding company, according to the reporting cited by wublockchain.xyz. The structure ties one of the Gulf's most prominent royal investors directly to a US banking venture connected to the Trump family's crypto interests.
The preliminary approval and the ownership breakdown have been corroborated across multiple accounts of the same development, with four distinct sources covering the cluster. Each account converges on the same figures: the 49% stake held by Tahnoon and associated investors, and the 38% held by the Trump-affiliated side of the holding company.
What remains unclear is the timeline for full, non-preliminary approval, and what conditions the OCC has attached to the conditional approval that the bank must satisfy before beginning stablecoin issuance. Also unaddressed in current reporting is how the ownership stakes at the holding-company level translate into control or governance rights over the bank's operations, and whether additional regulatory reviews — domestic or involving foreign investment scrutiny — will apply given the scale of the Abu Dhabi-linked stake.