Eric Trump, son of US President Donald Trump and a businessman with several crypto ventures, said stablecoins could preserve the US dollar’s strength.
In an interview with The New York Post published Friday, Eric Trump said he is convinced stablecoins will “save the US dollar.” He highlighted USD1, the stablecoin tied to the Trump family’s crypto project, World Liberty Financial, which has drawn scrutiny in Washington.
When plans by World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — the Trump family-backed crypto project — were revealed back in late March, critics raised conflict of interest concerns. Attorney Andrew Rossow told Cointelegraph at the time that the stablecoin is “a direct affront to constitutional safeguards meant to prevent conflicts of interest.”
In April, US Representative Maxine Waters, ranking member of the US House Financial Services Committee, went as far as to suggest that Donald Trump was looking to replace the US dollar with his stablecoin:
“Trump likely wants the entire government to use stablecoins from payments made by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to Social Security payments, to paying taxes. And which coin do you think Trump would replace the dollar with? His own, of course.”
Conflict of interest concerns
Five Democratic senators also warned in a March letter that a sitting president’s direct financial stake in a stablecoin posed “unprecedented risks to our financial system.”
The Trump administration later advanced US stablecoin regulation with the GENIUS Act, which President Trump signed into law on July 18. The very next month, critics pointed to the US President’s personal fortune growing by roughly $2.4 billion from his crypto-related ventures since entering the space in 2022.
In early August, crypto-skeptic US Senator Elizabeth Warren, alongside Senators Chris Van Hollen and Ron Wyden, penned a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency expressing concerns over potential conflicts of interest involving the Trump family’s crypto business interests. In the letter, the Senators expressed concern about the recently approved stablecoin law:
“Notably, the bill does nothing to prevent President Trump, his family, or his affiliates from financially benefiting from the issuance and sale of stablecoins and their use in transactions.”
Related: Europe risks USD dominance without common stablecoin rules: ECB adviser
Will stablecoins help the US dollar?
Eric Trump is not the first person to claim that stablecoins will reinforce — or protect — the US dollar’s dominance. Back in February, Federal Reserve Bank Governor Christopher Waller said that he supports the adoption of stablecoins since they “will broaden the reach of the dollar across the globe and make it even more of a reserve currency than it is now.”
LayerZero Labs founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino said in early April that stablecoins are the best tool for the US government to maintain the US dollar’s hegemony in global financial markets. He said that stablecoins could be “the last Trojan Horse or vampire attack on every single other currency in the world.”
Related: Regulated multicurrency stablecoins will end the dollar’s crypto monopoly
Others disagree. European asset manager Amundi suggested in early July that the new, friendlier stablecoin regulation could threaten the long-term dominance of the US dollar.
Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight
