08-18-2026 
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One of President Donald Trump’s crypto projects is getting a United States bank license while the White House is seeking a few good pirates to help send crypto scammers to Davy Jones’ locker.
- SEC cancels crypto meeting as White House organizes its own meetup
- Trump’s World Liberty Financial gets bank license, people have thoughts
- FinCEN says no one wants to know who actually owns companies
- Paging Jean Lafite: White House seeks crypto hacking privateers
- Chainalysis sues US gov’t over rival TRM’s sole-source ICE contract
- Fairshake called out for targeting Florida Dem with fake headlines
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) raised some eyebrows last week when it abruptly cancelled its hotly expected ‘Reg Crypto’ meeting scheduled for Friday (14). The SEC cited an “unforeseen scheduling issue” and vowed to reschedule, although there’s still no word on a makeup date.
The meeting’s agenda had been promoted as an advancement of the SEC’s plan for “a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets.” This would include the long-promised ‘innovation exemption’ for various crypto projects, like tokenizing equities and the corresponding shift to 24/7 blockchain-based stock trades.
CoinDesk quoted sources saying concerns within the White House sparked the cancellation, with some individuals reportedly uneasy at the SEC starting down this road while the Senate’s digital asset market structure legislation (the CLARITY Act) awaits a September 15 cloture vote.
Last week saw some Democratic senators warn of pushback if the SEC chose to do an end-run around Congress as negotiations on CLARITY’s sticking points continue. And while some Wall Street groups are keen to hop on the tokenized equities bandwagon, others are alarmed by the SEC’s eagerness to let crypto firms drink tradfi’s milkshake without being subject to TradFi’s restrictions.
Whether or not the White House is responsible for the SEC cancelling its meeting, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will host its own event on Wednesday (19). Politico first reported that top execs from “the cryptocurrency and prediction market industries” would be attending the event, alongside TradFi bigwigs.
Semafor subsequently reported that the meeting “is expected to feature remarks from President Donald Trump.” White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt will be in attendance, as will SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and Michael Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The meetup was described as “a small-group kick-off” for the CFTC’s inaugural meeting of its Innovation Committee, which takes place the day after the White House shindig. Selig has been promoting the innovation confab by tweeting: “If regulators want to keep pace with the speed of innovation, we must listen to the people driving it.”
The CFTC meeting, dubbed the “New Frontier of Finance,” will be livestreamed on CFTC.gov. The agenda features sessions on “Crypto’s Regulatory Evolution: From Uncertainty to Clarity;” “Artificial Intelligence: Preparing for Intelligent Markets;” and “Prediction Markets: Innovation, Jurisdiction, and the Future of Event Contracts.”
WLF gets OCC nod, world ends
President Trump’s participation in a meeting discussing both the crypto and prediction market sectors would, in a previous era, be considered highly improper given his family’s involvement in both sectors. But that was then, this is now, and impropriety has left the building.
Case in point: as we predicted last week, the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted conditional approval to the national trust bank application filed in January by World Liberty Financial (WLF), the highly controversial token-issuing project that is 38% owned by a Trump-linked entity.
In a letter dated August 14, the OCC granted preliminary conditional approval to World Liberty Trust Company, National Association (Bank), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Delaware-based WLTC Holdings LLC. However, the bank’s main office will be based in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, a short drive south from the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
In a release celebrating the approval, WLF said the new bank will be overseen by a five-member board that includes CEO Zach Witkoff (son of Trump’s presidential envoy Steve Witkoff), Scott Alper, president/CIO of Witkoff Group, and Steve Witkoff’s brother Robert Witkoff (a former co-CIO of The Chubb Corporation).
Two independent director roles will be filled by Jeffrey Weiner, former chair/CEO of accounting firm Marcum LLP, and Erin Baskett, founder of Sine Qua Non Capital and a former member of the board of governors at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
WLF’s charter won’t allow the new bank to accept retail customer deposits, gain access to a Federal Reserve master account, or enjoy Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) coverage on its accounts.
But WLF sought the bank license to exert greater control over USD1, the dollar-backed stablecoin that WLF launched in March 2025. WLF currently pays a third party (BitGo) to issue the token and custody the reserve assets backing the ~$4 billion in circulating USD1.
Zach Witkoff said “a national trust bank brings USD1 issuance, custody, and reserve management together under OCC supervision.” He later tweeted: “Our ambition is clear: to build the most trusted and widely used digital dollar in the world while strengthening the role of the U.S. dollar across the global economy.”
The OCC’s approval letter noted concerns over the “potential conflicts of interest” regarding an entity partially owned/controlled by the president and members of his family, as well as fears that WLTC “could receive preferential treatment” due to OCC chief Jonathan Gould being a Trump appointee. The letter tut-tuts these concerns, saying Gould and OCC staff “acted consistently with their statutory duties and ethical obligations” in considering WLF’s application.
Not buying this claim is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who called WLTC’s approval “the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen.” Warren, who previously complained about the OCC doling out bank licenses to “seemingly ineligible companies,” immediately introduced draft legislation called the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act.
The bill would prohibit the OCC and other federal banking oversight agencies from issuing licenses to entities owned or controlled by a president, vice-president, spouses and children of these individuals, member of Congress, federal appointee or a “special Government employee.”
Ten other Senate Dems may have signed on as co-sponsors, and Trump critics may find it cute to call WLF “world bribery financial,” but this bill has approximately zero chance of passage in the current Congress.
Treasury no longer interested in companies’ beneficial owners
Other Trump critics were quick to point out that WLF’s OCC approval came just days after Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) made the surprise announcement that it would “permanently remove the requirement for U.S. companies and U.S. persons to report beneficial ownership information to FinCEN under the Corporate Transparency Act.”
Not content with merely abolishing this requirement going forward, FinCEN also stated that it “will delete previously reported information by U.S. persons—now exempt from the reporting requirements—from the beneficial ownership information database.”
It’s perhaps worth noting that a UAE-linked investment fund’s purchase of a 49% stake in WLF, a few days before Trump took his oath of office in January 2025, didn’t become public knowledge for over a year. The UAE also loomed large in the $2 billion purchase of USD1 a few months after Trump’s inauguration, as well as the Witkoff-negotiated deal that followed, allowing the UAE to buy microchip technology previously under embargo.
While FinCEN’s shift was framed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as “a victory for common sense and American small businesses,” Sen. Warren called it “a gift to cartels, criminals, and U.S. adversaries that exploit shell companies to move millions through our financial system.” Warren noted that Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio once championed the rule as “the most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades.”
Other critics dubbed the change “Trump’s gift to the money launderers,” noting that FinCEN “isn’t merely shutting down an anti-corruption database. It’s deleting the data so future investigators can’t use it.”
Still others noted that the reporting requirement was part of the Corporate Transparency Act, which passed in 2021 and hasn’t been overturned, meaning Congress has the right to challenge Treasury’s action as overstepping its mandate. But that would require Congressional Republicans to thwart Trump’s will, which by this point seems even less plausible than Elon making good on his ‘men on Mars by 2021’ prediction.Avast, ye crypto swabs
Not content with turning the clock back to 2020, the White House appears set on returning America to the Middle Ages, or at least the 19th century.
On August 12, Trump issued a memo on Expanding Capabilities to Transnational Cyber-Enabled Crime, in which he vowed to unleash “the ingenuity of the private sector” against Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) that are “harming American citizens.”
Full guidance on this plan is due in 60 days, but basically, the feds are looking to enlist would-be tech privateers who can meet “appropriate levels of technical proficiency,” pass a vetting process, and submit to a few other cursory inspections. Assuming they pass, these groups would be authorized to “conduct Cyber Surveillance Operations and Cyber Effects Operations against foreign Cyber-Enabled Transnational Criminal Organizations (CE-TCOs).”
The “cyber effects operations” cited above are defined as resulting in “the manipulation, disruption, denial, degradation, or destruction of information systems, networks, physical or virtual infrastructure controlled by information systems, or information resident thereon.”
Companies wouldn’t be allowed to engage in any action involving ‘critical outcomes,’ aka anything likely to result in loss of life or injury, or “rise to the level of use of force or armed attack under international law.”
And CE-TCOs would exclude any group that is “an institutional part of a foreign government or wholly operated under a foreign government’s direction.” So relax, North Korea’s state-sponsored Lazarus Group of crypto hackers, you’re off the hook.
The privateers’ activities would be overseen by reps from the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security, each of whom will need to sign off on any action before it’s taken. Companies will have to sign contracts, “maintain a bond or escrow” of at least $1 million that would be forfeited should they fail to comply with the terms of their contracts.
Curiously, beyond the reference to contracts, the memo contains no specifics on how these private entities might be compensated for their cyber-defense of American citizens. Do they get to keep any or all digital assets that might be obtained from the cyber bad guys?
In a tweet promoting Trump’s memo, White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt appeared to suggest there was a more tangible reward to this than just the gratitude of the administration. “Letters of marque are in our Constitution, making privateers as American as apple pie.” Said letters expressly authorized pirates-turned-patriots to keep the booty they seized from enemy ships, so naked capitalism appears definitely in play here.
Witt added that “cybercrime cost Americans nearly $21B last year, up 26% YoY and climbing, with about a third of it involving crypto.” Trump’s directive, “while not crypto-specific, is a major step toward shutting down the scammers who exploit crypto to prey on Americans.”
Chainalysis v TRM v USA
Some observers have suggested the would-be privateers might be better at surveillance than actual attacks. That said, you can probably eliminate blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis from joining the privateer parade, given that it’s just filed a lawsuit against the U.S. federal government.
On July 1, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded a sole-source contract to blockchain sleuths (and Chainalysis rival) TRM Labs. The contract, worth nearly $95 million, is for “TRM forensic software and support services to support Homeland Security Task Force Investigations.”
A redacted copy of ICE’s filing explaining why it didn’t put the contract up for bids says Homeland Security identified TRM as “the only source that is uniquely positioned to deliver the [REDACTED]” needed by the agencies involved.
Another section of the filing indicates that the feds were seeking “advanced analytical and artificial intelligence (AI) platform support services, including skilled intelligence analysts and technology solutions capable of real-time monitoring, tracing, and disruption of illicit financial flows.”
On July 27, Chainalysis filed a complaint against the U.S. government protesting its “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable decision” to conduct the sole-source bid. The filing was sealed due to it containing “confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets” that Chainalysis claims would cause “competitive harm” to the company were they made public.
TRM filed a motion to intervene the following day, and oral arguments are expected on September 2. The government has requested a final ruling by September 10 so that it can get on with the task at hand.
Fairshake, dirty dealings
Finally, the crypto sector’s reputation as a free-spending force that politicians either kowtow to or face removal from office took another hit last Tuesday (11).
Fairshake, the largest crypto-focused political action committee (PAC), stayed out of Minnesota’s Democratic Senate primary race, but execs from Fairshake corporate contributors like Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) spent over $165,000 backing Angie Craig, who lost the race to Peggy Flanagan.
Craig lost despite outspending Flanagan by more than 4x, including $10 million from so-called ‘dark money’ groups that don’t reveal their backers. Flanagan’s supporters referenced Craig’s “crypto billionaire dark money backers,” and Flanagan herself made Craig’s crypto support an issue, saying her opponent was “funded by crypto and AIPAC [American-Israel Public Affairs Committee] and health insurance companies.”
Crypto groups like Fairshake have had their share of wins during the 2026 primary season, but they’ve also had some costly failures. Earlier this month, Fairshake’s Democrat-focused offshoot Protect Progress spent $2 million in a failed bid to secure incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar’s spot on November’s ballot for Michigan’s 13th District.
In March, Fairshake et al spent $10 million in a losing bid to prevent Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton from securing the Dem nomination to replace the outgoing Sen. Dick Durbin.
Tuesday (18) brings the results of the Dem primary for Florida’s 24th District, where Protect Progress has spent over $2 million opposing Oliver Gilbert, a Miami-Dade County Commissioner looking to replace the retiring Rep. Frederica Wilson.
Ahead of that vote, some of the Protect Progress-funded anti-Gilbert TV commercials and mailers have been called out for “using fake Miami Herald headlines to make its case.” Making that allegation? The Miami Herald.
The ads in question paint Gilbert as supporting Trump’s immigrant deportation push and voting in favor of a $15 million plan to allow the Hard Rock Stadium to host FIFA World Cup matches, which the ads claim helped line the pocket of a “MAGA Donor’s Company.”
The Herald’s analysis of these ads found that the latter article doesn’t mention Gilbert by name (it was a unanimous County Commission vote), but the Fairshake ads “make it appear as though the entire story was about him.” The other ‘headlines’ rest on similarly shaky foundations.
In response, the Herald quoted Gilbert saying “what else would you expect from crypto con artists trying to buy a Democratic primary?” Punchbowl News’ Brendan Pedersen subsequently reported that Gilbert started running ads explaining how “Trump and his crypto con artist billionaires just put a target on my back” while he “fight[s] to protect seniors from crypto scams.” Perhaps, but recent polling shows Gilbert currently trailing state Sen. Shevrin Jones by double-digits.
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