特朗普家族获准筹建银行，加密企业加速入场

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You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. Well, President Trump's family is on the verge of having its very own bank. The president's relatives and their business associates have won preliminary approval to start one, riding a wave that doesn't come around often. It's now easier than at any time in almost 20 years to get a national bank charter thanks to the Trump administration's deregulation push.

I'm reading right from one of the most read stories on the Bloomberg terminal. It is today's big take. Paige Smith is Bloomberg News finance reporter. She's part of the team behind the story. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. The process for getting a national bank charter. Before we get into what the president's family is doing and what World Liberty Financial is doing, which you detail in the piece, just talk to us about how that how that happens and how it traditionally works.

Certainly. So, first of all, I think it's important to note that there are a number of different bank charters that anyone or any entity can pursue at any given time. The uh president's family is pursuing a trust charter and has received conditional approval from one financial regulator to do that. Um that regulator is the office of the controller of the currency. Um

the OC

the OC as we know it. Um run by Jonathan Gould who is actually a Trump appointee himself. Um so there are a lot of different charters that anyone can pursue. Um take New Bank for example, a really well-known fintech in that's Brazil based. Um they've received approval to be a national bank. So it's slightly different um and maybe a little bit more vanilla or bread and butter than uh a trust bank for example.

Huh. So I mean the Trump family now on the verge though of having its own bank. What exactly are they trying to build?

So the entity is known as World Liberty Financial and it's owned by u members of the Trump family and their business associates. Um and they are best known for a stable coin called USD1. And when they received this conditional approval and also before they received approval when they were applying um World Liberty Financial essentially said that they want to um grow the reach of the stable coin and um build out the business um build out that business specifically.

You make the point in your piece uh that there have been other presidents who've had connections to the financial industry. Uh the Roosevelts operated their New York-based financial firm for more than a century. You write I learned from your reporting that George HW Bush's father was managing partner of the financial services firm Brown Brothers Haramman. Uh but have is there any precedent for a sitting president to have uh children who are actually are starting a bank?

As far as we know, there's not. This is a sort of one. This is uh as far as we've reported, this is the first time that something like this has occurred. Um and it is really noteworthy because like I mentioned, the um the application was reviewed by staff members at the OC and leaders of that agency were appointed by this sitting president, by President Donald Trump. For those out there uh watching or listening right now who might say, "Wait a second, there is a conflict of interest or there could be the appearance of a conflict of interest."

You and the team reached out to the White House. What did they say? The White House essentially said that there is no conflict of interest here. And when we looked at the actual documents approving this entity to become a bank, um they acknowledged that members of the public had raised the question or raised the question of the appearance of um conflicts of interest and essentially said senior members of the OC have reviewed this application and it may move forward.

So why exactly does World uh Liberty Financial want to become a bank in the first place?

So there are a lot of reasons for becoming a bank. Cheaper funding is one of them, but especially at this moment in time, if you think about it, if you're a bank in the US financial system, that comes with a level of legitimacy and um sort of an an it's an inherent stamp of approval from the US government to operate. And that's a big deal when you're a smaller digital asset firm or a fintech or an upand cominging entity to be able to say we have been approved by this US financial regulator to operate in the US financial system.

That's a big deal.

So what I found to be particularly interesting is in the piece, you know, you essentially note that this isn't happening in isolation. You found that it's easier to get a national bank charter right now than it was maybe uh 20 years ago in the past. So what is that

or maybe even during the Biden administration? Fair, fair play.

So, what's changed?

Really, the pace has changed. It's the If you We include a number of graphics in the story that I would encourage everyone to read um that really note just how different it is, the timing is from the point of application to some sort of a decision, whether an approval or a disapproval or um any sort of decision on a bank charter. So that pace has really been expedited. But also just the number of banks that are being approved.

The first n in the first 19 months of the president's second term, the OC approved 22 bank charters. That's more than the f previous five years combined.

You know, you've done a lot of reporting on on fintexs and traditionally with with fintexs, they they haven't actually been banks. what they've been is like, okay, well, if you deposit money or you put your money with this fintech, they hold it in a bank that they have a partnership with. Is that changing? Because it is easier to become a bank. Now,

that's such a good question. So, it is changing in some ways, but it's not changing entirely. So, for example, some um there may be some banks that will still work with a third-party bank for another branch of their business. When you apply to become a bank or a new bank as a fintech, you have to make a present a very clear plan of how you plan on operating for the next few years. So if an opportunity presents itself and you deviate from that plan in any way, you can't do that under the plan.

You can't you need to make perhaps have a third party relationship with someone else to execute that new opportunity. So if we were to zoom out, are we like essentially running an experiment here or you know what happens when you suddenly allow many of these crypto and fintech companies to actually go this route into traditional banking?

I think that is a great question and I think we're going to have to see how it plays out. Um I would note that a a lot of these a some of these companies have operated before, a lot of them have not.

Um some of these companies are coming from other countries, some of them are US-based. It really is a very interesting moment time moment in time and a moment in history to see how these sort of non-traditional firms will fare within the parameters of the US financial system.

You go through some of the firms you mentioned new bank for example. There's also um I'm not a Lord of the Rings guy so I don't know if I'm going to say Arabore is that it's all everything with Palmer Lucky is Lord of the Rings I guess. I don't know. So okay Arabore bank with Palmer Lucky is the guy behind that. He's the guy behind Anderil and Oculus which was acquired by what was then Facebook.

Why should Arabore be on our radar?

I think that it this influx of new banks should be on everyone's radars to see first of all how successful they can be within the parameters of the tradition traditional system but also to see if they slip up in any way. Frankly, um I think that it is the job of the regulators to monitor that and it sounds like they have they intend to do so to watch these players clo