A Depegging and a Tweet: When the U.S. President Begins "Legislative Escort" for His Family Business

Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Ethan (@ethanzhang_web3)

On March 4, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, specifically criticizing the banking industry for threatening and undermining the GENIUS Act. He urged Congress to expedite the crypto market structure legislation and warned that if the framework is delayed, the United States' advantage in the crypto sector would be ceded to other nations. The language was sharp, the tone urgent, portraying him as a defender championing the industry's cause.

However, the meaning of this statement becomes far more nuanced when you know that World Liberty Financial (WLFI), owned by the Trump family, is the issuer of the stablecoin USD1. One of the most direct beneficiaries of the GENIUS Act is precisely the family business of the person sitting in the White House who posted this message.

This is not the first time. Since Trump's return to the White House in January 2025, his crypto empire has never been truly separated from his presidential identity. Two hats have been worn by the same person all along—it's just that in the past few weeks, the overlap between them has become harder to ignore than ever.

On one hand, the family project USD1 suffered a coordinated attack in late February, briefly depegging. The WLFI team subsequently transferred large amounts of tokens to centralized exchanges for two consecutive days, sparking market speculation with on-chain signals. On the other hand, the President himself is charging forward in Washington, D.C., advocating for stablecoin legislation and directly countering the banking lobby's resistance.

Two narratives are running simultaneously, converging on the same family, within the same timeframe, and on the same issue. This is what makes the current Trump crypto story truly fascinating.

The Stress Test of USD1

In March 2025, World Liberty Financial officially launched USD1, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. Its reserve assets consist of short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, U.S. dollar deposits, and cash equivalents, with custody handled by the crypto custodian BitGo and monthly reserve attestation reports provided regularly by the accounting and consulting firm Crowe. In terms of design framework, it follows a regulatory compliance route, distinguishing itself from offshore stablecoins with opaque reserves and questionable transparency.

The market entry timing was precise. Just as discussions around the GENIUS Act were heating up and market expectations for compliant stablecoins were rising, USD1 debuted with a clear stance: I am the dollar, I am compliant, I have the presidential family's backing. In May 2025, the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund MGX announced a strategic investment in Binance using $2 billion worth of USD1. This transaction overnight transformed USD1 from a newcomer in the crypto space into a player that could not be ignored on the global stablecoin map.

By March 2026, USD1's circulating market capitalization had reached approximately $4.5 billion, firmly placing it among the top five global stablecoins. However, behind this scale, some details are noteworthy: According to research from data analytics platform Kaiko, over half of USD1's liquidity on PancakeSwap comes from market maker wallets associated with the WLFI team, rather than genuine market trading demand. Its monthly active user base, measured in dollar terms, still lags significantly behind established players like USDT and USDC. Political endorsement is the strongest marketing resource, but it cannot replace real market depth.

On February 23, 2026, a sudden stress test disrupted this delicate balance.

That morning, USD1 briefly depegged, its price dropping to $0.994, deviating from the $1 peg by about 0.6%. WLFI promptly issued an alert on the X platform, characterizing the volatility as a multi-point coordinated attack: attackers had compromised the social media accounts of several WLFI co-founders, hired KOLs to spread panic information on a large scale, and simultaneously opened short positions on WLFI tokens, attempting to profit from the artificially created chaos.

WLFI spokesperson David Wachsman later told the media that the project's engineering and security teams successfully defended against the coordinated attacks from multiple directions. He stated that the day's events precisely demonstrated that USD1's design is robust and can be relied upon under any conditions. USD1 subsequently recovered to around $0.998, with its 1:1 redemption mechanism serving as an anchor and preventing a deeper crisis of confidence.

In terms of outcome, the attack indeed did not succeed. However, from a contextual perspective, the attack occurred at a highly sensitive time—just days earlier, WLFI had hosted a high-profile crypto summit at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, attended by government officials, traditional banking executives, and former Binance CEO CZ.

Although the depegging was brief, it exposed a structural issue: political endorsement can bring market capitalization, but not necessarily stress resistance. When a stablecoin's biggest selling point is the name of the presidential family, any attack targeting that name simultaneously becomes an attack on the stablecoin itself.

Is the Team Starting to Dump?

Approximately ten days after the attack, another set of on-chain data emerged, further amplifying the market's room for interpretation.

On-chain analysis shows that starting March 4, WLFI transferred large amounts of WLFI tokens to centralized exchanges over two consecutive days: On the first day, approximately 146.4 million WLFI tokens, worth about $15.4 million at the time, were transferred to OKX and Bitget combined. On the second day, another approximately 16.71 million tokens, worth about $1.74 million, were transferred to OKX. The two transfers totaled about 163 million tokens, with a total value exceeding $17 million.

In the on-chain world, transferring tokens to centralized exchanges is often seen as a high-signal-strength behavior, typically hinting at potential selling intent. While not all transferred tokens are immediately liquidated, the action itself is enough to trigger associations and vigilance among market participants, especially against the backdrop of a project facing multiple pressures.

This association seems particularly plausible at the current juncture. The USD1 stablecoin had just experienced a brief depegging event on February 23, 2026, with its price dropping to around $0.994 at one point, even touching $0.98 in some instances. Although the price recovered to nearly $0.998 within hours, the event intensified external skepticism about the WLFI project's robustness.

Simultaneously, political controversies surrounding WLFI remain unresolved—the U.S. House of Representatives launched an investigation on February 4, 2026, demanding WLFI provide ownership records, fund flows, governance documents, and details of board changes. The focus is on the transaction where Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family in the UAE, secretly acquired approximately 49% of WLFI's equity for $500 million through his controlled company, Aryam Investment 1 (signed on January 16, 2025, four days before Trump's second inauguration), with a deadline of March 1, 2026. Additionally, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Andy Kim, emphasizing national security risks and potential conflicts of interest, requested the Treasury Department's CFIUS to review the transaction on February 13.

It is noteworthy that WLFI has not issued any public statement regarding these on-chain transfers. This silence itself has become part of the market's interpretation.

Of course, another interpretation is equally valid: The project is proactively arranging CEX liquidity at a strategic level for subsequent market operations; or, this is a predetermined liquidity management action within the token economic design, unrelated to external circumstances. Neither narrative can be entirely ruled out, which is precisely the most perplexing aspect of on-chain data—it provides facts, but not intent.

However, according to WLFI's operating agreement, entities controlled by the Trump family are entitled to 75% of the project's profit share. Trump's holding entity, DT Marks Defi LLC, holds approximately 60% of WLFI's equity. Trump family members and their affiliates have been allocated about 22.5 billion WLFI tokens. Any market movement of these tokens is not merely a financial decision at the project level but also a path for asset realization in the crypto market for this family.

Currently, WLFI's token price has fallen more than 50% from its all-time high. At this juncture, any large-scale transfer action is inevitably re-examined against the backdrop of this decline.

The President's Other Battle in Washington

On March 4, Trump posted on Truth Social, his wording more urgent than usual. He specifically criticized the banking industry for threatening and undermining the GENIUS Act, demanded that Congress expedite the crypto market structure legislation, and warned that if the U.S. acts slowly, its crypto advantage would be ceded to other nations.

This rhetoric is not unfamiliar—packaging domestic policy disputes as great power competition and portraying opponents as traitors. Trump has used it many times, and it has always worked.

He is speaking up for the industry, and also for himself. It's just that these two things are packaged in the same statement.

The GENIUS Act itself is not complicated. It is the first bill in U.S. history to establish a federal regulatory framework for stablecoin issuance, clarifying licensing requirements, reserve mandates, and anti-money laundering obligations. Signed into law after multiple rounds of revisions in 2025, its direction is positive, but the devil is in the details.

The banking lobby has focused on one clause: whether stablecoins can offer yields to holders. The logic is straightforward—if stablecoins can pay interest, why would ordinary people keep their money in banks? Deposit outflow is the last thing the banking industry wants to see. Consequently, lobbying groups have become active, pushing for amendments to relevant clauses and extending this resistance to another piece of crypto legislation, the CLARITY Act, creating a捆绑: if you want stablecoin legislation, you must first agree to my conditions.

Trump's response was to directly lambast the banking industry on social media. This posture signals one thing: The legislative process is not going smoothly. A truly confident proponent doesn't need to apply pressure through posts. The need to post suggests the筹码 on the negotiating table are insufficient.

However, what truly complicates this博弈 is not the banking industry's resistance, but a gap in the text of the GENIUS Act.

The law contains no条款 prohibiting the President or his family members from profiting from stablecoin issuance. This gap sparked controversy during the legislative process, with some senators attempting to add relevant prohibition clauses, but they were ultimately not included. Thus, a peculiar structure emerged: A President is simultaneously the promoter of legislation, a potential beneficiary of that legislation, and could potentially exercise veto power if the legislation's content affects his own interests—this logical闭环 is perhaps the deepest底色 of this Washington博弈.

Conclusion: The Intersection of Two Lines

Place the three events above on the same timeline: February 23, USD1 depegged due to a coordinated attack, then quickly recovered; several days after the attack, WLFI transferred large amounts of tokens to CEXs for two consecutive days; March 4, Trump posted on Truth Social, launching a direct counterattack against the banking industry obstructing the GENIUS Act.

These three events occurred within less than two weeks. While there is no simple causal relationship between them, the protagonist is the same family—the crypto empire of the current U.S. President, Donald Trump. On one side, the family project faces real pressure in the market, whether from external attacks, opaque on-chain actions, or political investigations from Congress. On the other side, the President is using the greatest resources at his disposal—the White House's话语权 and political credit—to护盘 for stablecoin legislation.

The intersection of these two lines is Trump himself. He is not switching between his businessman and presidential identities; he is fighting on two battlefields simultaneously, and both battlefields point in the same direction: ensuring USD1 and WLFI survive, allowing them to gain legitimacy, scale, and profits under a regulatory framework he is personally推动.

External质疑 about this overlap has always existed and has明显升温 in early 2026. The investigation led by Representative Ro Khanna focuses on the transaction where the UAE royal family secretly acquired approximately 49% of WLFI's equity for $500 million, questioning fund flows, governance transparency, and potential national security risks—especially since shortly after the UAE royal family's investment in WLFI, the Trump administration approved a plan to export hundreds of thousands of advanced chips to G42, an enterprise under the UAE's Tahnoun, despite the decision having been previously搁置 on national security grounds.

The legal community has termed this transaction a potential constitutional violation (violating the constitutional clause prohibiting the President from accepting foreign gifts). The White House's response is: Trump himself has never been involved in any WLFI transactions or decisions and has maintained distance from the company since taking office.

This claim may hold legally, but in reality, it describes a state of隔离 that is almost impossible for the outside world to independently verify. When a presidential family's enterprise continuously appreciates through policy benefits, and the President himself continuously creates policy benefits for this industry, whether利益 exists and whether关联 is established becomes a structural灰色地带.

The deeper question is not whether Trump has broken the law, but whether existing institutions have sufficient tools to handle this new type of power-business overlap. Stablecoins are an industry highly dependent on regulatory clarity. And when the promoter of that regulatory clarity is itself a market participant, the very rule-making of the entire game becomes an issue that needs to be重新审视.

Trump's two hats are not a secret he刻意 hides. They exist with a certain degree of openness, continuously watched by the market, the media, and some members of Congress.

The reason it can持续运行 is precisely because every mechanism that could theoretically constrain it—congressional legislation, presidential signing, regulatory rule-making—has his hand present in each环节. The constraint mechanism itself is in the hands of the person who needs to be constrained.