The market capitalisation of the USD1 stablecoin, issued by World Liberty Financial (WLF), a company affiliated with Donald Trump, surged to approximately $2.1 billion by early May.
According to CoinGecko, the figure stood at around $137 million as of April 28.
Data from DeFi Llama indicates that nearly all USD1 supply is issued on the BNB Chain, with the exception of $14.5 million on Ethereum.
The blockchain explorer BscScan shows that more than two dozen issuances of the coin were recorded on April 28-29, mostly in volumes of ~50-100 million tokens.
On May 1, the Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX announced it would use USD1 to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance. Analyst Brandon Kay of The Block directly linked the stablecoin’s capitalisation surge to this deal.
In March, WLF confirmed plans to launch a dollar-pegged stablecoin. In early April, the company proposed an airdrop of “small” amounts in USD1 to holders of the project’s native token, WLFI. On May 7, a snapshot vote began among users to support the initiative.
According to Reuters, in January, the US president’s family consolidated control over WLF. They now have rights to 75% of net income and 60% of DeFi platform operations following the launch of the main product.
Donald Trump is listed in company documents as the “chief crypto advocate,” while his sons Eric, Barron, and Donald Trump Jr. are named as Web3 ambassadors. They do not hold official positions in the project.
Back in March, WSJ and Bloomberg reported on plans by the Trumps and WLF to acquire a stake in Binance’s US business.
The information was denied by both Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao and representatives of the company affiliated with the president’s family.