coindesk.com
- World Liberty Financial’s $USD1 stablecoin, backed by the family of President Donald Trump, was used to pay $250,000 in fighter performance bonuses at UFC Freedom 250 on the White House lawn.
- The promotion comes months after World Liberty Financial borrowed $75 million from a DeFi protocol, which temporarily locked out retail $USD1 depositors, and amid litigation with crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun.
- $USD1’s circulating supply has grown to about $4.6 billion as World Liberty Financial seeks a federal banking license.
$USD1, the stablecoin issued by the Trump family's crypto venture World Liberty Financial, has gone from locking retail depositors out of a DeFi lending pool to being used to pay fighters on the White House lawn.
The UFC said Friday that World Liberty Financial would serve as the presenting partner of a $250,000 performance bonus pool at UFC Freedom 250, a mixed martial arts contest held on the south lawn of the presidential residence on Sunday, June 14, President Donald Trump's 80th birthday. The bonuses were paid out in $USD1 to fighters across seven matches.
The awards are among the most prominent commercial deployments of $USD1 to date.
The visibility push comes months after CoinDesk reported on a borrowing controversy that briefly hit prices of $WLFI, World Liberty Financial's token, and rattled the project's sentiment in social circles.
The company had borrowed more than $75 million in stablecoins from Dolomite, a DeFi lending protocol whose co-founder Corey Caplan advises $WLFI, using 3 billion of its own $WLFI governance tokens as collateral and depositing its own $USD1 as part of the arrangement.
The borrowing pushed the $USD1 pool to 93% utilization, meaning retail depositors who had lent $USD1 to the pool expecting to withdraw at will could not do so until the loans were repaid. $WLFI repaid $25 million of the position, then minted $25 million in fresh $USD1 days later, actively managing the token's supply through April. World Liberty Financial did not respond to a request for comment on the report.
World Liberty is also in litigation with Justin Sun, the crypto tycoon and early buyer of $WLFI governance tokens, who sued the company, alleging it improperly froze his holdings. $WLFI countersued for defamation.
Some observers said the commercial impact of Sunday's event is straightforward.
"Paying the fighters in the $USD1 stablecoin would have the same economic function as writing them a check," Todd Phillips, a crypto expert at the Klaros Group, told The Guardian. "Announcing to the world they are doing it in $USD1 sounds like they are advertising to the world that $USD1 is out there and that it is connected to the UFC and the White House."
$USD1's circulating supply has grown to around $4.6 billion from $3.3 billion on Jan. 1.
The company has also applied for a banking license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.