Some of the fighters at Sunday’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on the White House lawn will receive bonus stablecoins issued by the Trump family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial.
Monday, World Freedom confirmed that the UFC would pay up to $250,000 in bonuses using 1 USD, the US dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by the company. The UFC had already made a similar announcement before the event.
The price of $1 jumped above $1 on June 12 and stayed there, according to last look data from CoinMarketCap. Trading volume over the past 24 hours increased by more than 93%, to $2.38 billion.
World Liberty Financial’s USD1 has traded below $1 for most of the past month. Source: CoinMarketCap.
The “UFC Freedom 250” event, heavily criticized by many members of Congress for its reported Valued at $60 million, it took place on the South Lawn of the White House as part of events planned for the country’s semi-fiftieth anniversary. Sponsors included World Liberty, prediction markets company Polymarket and cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, which announced it would offer $1 million in bonuses to fighters with its Cronos (CRO) token.
World Liberty, launched in 2024 by members of the Trump family and a few others since linked to his administration, has been at the center of controversy over corruption allegations aimed at the president. In May 2025, a UAE company announced plans to use the $1 stablecoin to settle a $2 billion investment in Binance. Global freedom too has a pending request with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust charter.
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Trump’s financial revelations filed as of January 2025, his holdings in World Liberty were worth more than $50 million. Last year, he also signed the GENIUS Act, establishing a framework for stablecoin payments in the United States, amid similar criticism from many Democratic lawmakers over potential conflicts of interest.
“There appears to be no limit to Donald Trump’s self-serving activities. » said Jaelin O’Halloran, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, in response to the UFC announcement. “Trump never misses an opportunity to use the power of the presidency to enrich himself and his family. »
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Cointelegraph that “there are no conflicts of interest,” saying Trump’s assets “are in a trust managed by his children.”
World Liberty faces lawsuit from Tron founder
In April, Tron founder Justin Sun, a Trump supporter and one of the largest holders of the president’s TRUMP memecoin, filed a complaint against World Libertyalleging that the company froze its tokens and threatened to destroy them “without any proper justification.” Sun said he would continue to support Trump and the administration’s crypto policies, although World Liberty countersued the Tron founder weeks later.
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