A $2 billion investment in Binance was settled using USD1 by Abu Dhabi-based MGX.
The USD1 stablecoin, launched by World Liberty Financial, has passed $3 billion in market value, according to a post shared by the company on X.
“USD1 market cap has surpassed $3B. This is a big moment for our team and the WLFI community. But milestones aren’t the goal — building the future of financial rails is. And we are just getting started,” the company wrote.
World Liberty Financial, co-founded by Donald Trump Jr., created USD1 earlier this year after Trump took back the White House, saying simply that “this one is for the retail users.”
The so-called stable token first broke past the $1 billion mark in April, less than a month after it went live.
From the beginning, the project called itself a tool for real-time crypto payments, pushing to build strong relationships with retail users and major U.S. exchanges.
WLFI partnered with Coinbase and FalconX, setting up distribution channels to get USD1 into more wallets. It’s also trying to take over Solana’s stablecoin turf by teaming up with meme coin project Bonk and Solana-native decentralized exchange Raydium.
WLFI co-founder Zach Witkoff said, “This is just the beginning, we are building the future of finance driven by real world adoption of USD1.”
The sudden jump in value followed Binance introducing a Booster Program tied to USD1. Users who hold the stablecoin on the exchange now get up to 20% APR through flexible earn products.
Binance also confirmed it would swap all collateral backing its Binance-peg BUSD (B-Token) into USD1, at a 1:1 rate. This move embeds USD1 deeper into the exchange’s collateral system, effectively replacing BUSD in some areas.
That’s not all. The stablecoin is also tied to bigger financial deals. Earlier this year, Abu Dhabi-based MGX used USD1 to complete a $2 billion investment in Binance. This payment came just before President Trump granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, who co-founded Binance.
At the time, the Wall Street Journal reported speculation that CZ may have used his influence to boost WLFI ahead of the pardon.
Binance U.S. denied any coordination and claimed its listings of WLFI and USD1 were just “purely business decisions.” Despite that, Trump’s involvement and the WLFI-Binance link drew fire from Democrats. Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed to this connection while fighting against the GENIUS Act, which was later passed into law.
Meanwhile, earlier this morning, the BTC/USD1 trading pair on Binance experienced a flash crash, briefly dragging Bitcoin down to $24,000 for a few seconds.
The price then bounced above $87,000 before stabilizing, according to data gotten from the world’s largest exchange. Other pairs like BTC/USDT weren’t affected, but the incident exposed how fragile newer trading pairs can be when liquidity dries up.
The crash came from a microstructure failure. There weren’t enough buy or sell orders near the current market price. On thin pairs, one aggressive order or a missing bid can wipe through the order book and cause a sharp drop.
Once new bids enter or the order clears, the price jumps back up. Binance confirmed it was limited to the BTC/USD1 spot pair only.
This kind of thing happens when a trading pair lacks depth. A shallow book means even one big trade can move prices way off course, even if just for a moment. USD1 may be scaling fast, but its liquidity structure still has holes that need to be watched.
