Donald Trump Jr. (left) and Eric Trump speak in a squawk on the street on February 18, 2026.
CNBC
Since the dollar’s creation in 1792, U.S. presidents and their families have generally been content with a status quo that effectively gives the national government a monopoly on issuing currency and forbids the use of foreign currencies.
Consider the start of initial coin issuance in dollars in this country. At a time when the U.S. government was eager to surpass the superiority of the Spanish-made 8-disc set, which was commonly distributed throughout the United States at the time.
When the president said something about the dollar itself, it was generally a reiteration of the U.S. government’s “strong dollar” policy.
It continued more or less uninterrupted through 46 presidential inaugurations, until last March, when a company partially owned by President Donald Trump and his family began selling USD1, a virtual currency that replaces the dollar.
Now, the president’s two eldest sons told CNBC on the sidelines of a day-long crypto event he hosted why that should change.
The value of USD1, sold as a stablecoin, will be pegged to the dollar, just as it was pegged to the value of the then-dominant Spanish silver dollar when the dollar was first created in 1792.
The Trumps’ company, World Liberty Financial, touts the US dollar as an improvement on the official currency of the United States. The company’s website calls its stablecoin “The Dollar. Upgraded.” He calls the coin “still a US dollar, but for a new era.”
On Wednesday, the company held its first World Freedom Forum at Mar-a-Lago, the club owned by President Trump and operated as his winter White House.
The event, held just before the first anniversary of USD1’s release, brought together investors, technologists, TV personalities, the president of world soccer organization FIFA, and artist Nicki Minaj.
From the Mar-a-Lago ballroom stage beneath a giant stylized golden eagle sculpture, the message to attendees was that the old U.S. dollar needs to be modernized, that the private sector is the place to drive that innovation, and that stablecoins will help taxpayers by creating structural demand for U.S. government debt.
In fact, World Liberty proponents argue that the new cryptocurrency they are building is not a threat to the dollar at all, but because the value of a dollar is pegged to the dollar, it will help maintain the dollar’s dominance in global crypto finance.
But one of the big questions is, if we need to modernize the dollar, why should it be done by the private sector?
And why should this business be under the personal control of the president and his family, rather than under the control of the U.S. Treasury?
CNBC asked the president’s sons, World Liberty Financial co-founders Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, these questions in a small event space just steps from Mar-a-Lago’s pool.
Donald Trump Jr. responded, “This will actually maintain the supremacy of the dollar.”
“There are crypto companies that are among the top five buyers in the world,” he said. “That would actually stabilize the US dollar and do all the things we need to do.”
He argued that the federal government and the big Wall Street banking system simply aren’t agile or innovative enough to drive the necessary changes.
“As Americans, we’re going to lead the way,” Eric Trump said. “Who are you going to leave that to, JPMorgan? Are you going to leave it to the federal government?”
Eric Trump believes that Wall Street is so complacent that it is ripe for technological disruption.
“Do you think the big banks would actually do this?” he asked. “The reason I say this is because bankers have been working six hours a day for 50 years. Their lunch break is two hours. Usually they leave the office at 4 p.m.”
Eric and Donald Jr. make it clear that the animating force behind their venture isn’t the glee of inventors trying to build a better mousetrap or insider frustration with legacy companies that can’t or won’t adapt to the future.
Rather, what drives them is a raw sense of revenge.
The Trump brothers believe they are part of a system that unfairly marginalized the broader financial system after their father left office in 2021. After the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the banking system largely refused to do business with the Trump family.
“You know, we didn’t get into crypto because we were on the cutting edge,” Donald Trump Jr. said in an interview with CNBC’s Sarah Eisen on Wednesday. “We went into it out of necessity. They basically forced us into it.”
“We were the most canceled people in the world in 2020, 2021, and to get this retaliation and suddenly start pushing an agenda is really great,” Eric Trump told Eisen.
“Our challenge was to modernize finance and make sure something like this never happens to anyone again,” Eric Trump said.
Donald Trump Jr. said he has concluded that the traditional banking system is a “pyramid scheme.”
“They created this monster,” Trump Jr. said, citing a moment when he claimed that “big banks around the world “unbanked” Trump and other conservatives’ accounts when they had done nothing wrong, “just for the fact that we were all wearing hats that said ‘Make America Great Again.'”
Eric Trump recalled that his father’s absence from the White House between presidential terms was traumatic for his family.
“These are commercial buildings, residential buildings, golf courses all over the world. These are not political entities, and they were pulling these accounts out of us like we were absolute dogs,” Eric Trump said.
“We couldn’t pay our vendors, we couldn’t pay our employees. So we said, listen, there’s got to be a better way.”
The message to Eric Trump is that the Trump family will always counterpunch. When social media companies kicked his father off their platforms, President Trump launched his own “Truth Social Media” platform. And when the banking industry refused to do business with the Trump family, the family took matters into their own hands.
And that’s why, for the first time since 1792, a presidential family is creating upgraded American currency.
Call it the truth dollar.
