Key Insights
- Crypto news shows the Trump family’s USD1 stablecoin reached a $5.37 billion market cap in 10 months, overtaking decentralized rival DAI at $5.36 billion to become top five globally.
- Forbes analysis reveals 87% of USD1 supply sits on Binance exchange, the highest concentration of any top ten stablecoin.
- Binance founder CZ received a presidential pardon from Trump in October 2025, six months after the USD1 launch, followed by a $40 million promotion and coordinated marketing efforts.
Trump’s stablecoin USD1 just passed DAI to become one of the top five largest stablecoins globally. This crypto news bit showed up about 10 months after launch in spring 2025. But a recent analysis revealed something unusual.
About 87% of USD1’s entire supply sits on one exchange. That exchange is Binance. And Binance’s founder got a presidential pardon from Trump in October 2025.
Crypto News: USD1 Overtakes DAI in Just 10 Months
USD1 reached $5.37 billion in market cap by early February 2026. DAI sits at $5.36 billion. As per the crypto news, the USD1 stablecoin climbed past it after launching in March 2025.
The token comes from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture connected to the Trump family. Donald Trump’s entity originally owned about 60-75% of WLFI before a 2025 deal with an Emirati firm.
According to company disclosures, the family receives 75% of net proceeds from WLFI token sales and earns yield on USD1’s reserve investments in US Treasury bills and money market funds.
USD1 grew faster than almost any stablecoin in history. Zero to $5 billion in 10 months. Compare that to USDC or USDT, which took years to reach similar levels.
The crypto news showed that the trading volume consistently ranks in the top tier among all stablecoins. The growth happened despite some access limitations.
While USD1 stablecoin trades on US-friendly platforms like Coinbase and Kraken, Binance restricts US users due to prior regulatory settlements. Yet somehow, the majority of supply is concentrated on Binance anyway.
Crypto News Shows 87% Binance Concentration
The crypto news showed that the blockchain analysis on Feb. 9 showed where USD1 actually lives. About $4.7 billion of the total supply sits on Binance. That includes exchange wallets and user balances on the platform. The percentage works out to roughly 87%.
No other top ten stablecoin shows concentration that high at a single exchange. USDT and USDC are spread across dozens of platforms. Even smaller stablecoins maintain more distributed holdings. The 87% figure stands out as an extreme outlier according to the data.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, received a presidential pardon from Trump on Oct. 23, 2025. CZ had pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering violations in 2023. He served four months in prison. Binance paid billions in fines as part of the settlement with US authorities.
The pardon came six months after USD1 launched but before the major growth phase. In January 2026, Binance announced a $40 million WLFI token giveaway to users holding USD1. That promotion launched on Jan. 23 and accelerated USD1’s climb.
Decentralization Claims Face Questions As Control Sits With One Platform
The contrast with DAI hits hard. DAI markets itself as truly decentralized. No single entity controls the majority of the supply. The token spreads across DeFi protocols, exchanges, and individual wallets. MakerDAO governs it through community votes. That distribution reflects the original crypto ideal of removing central control.
USD1 overtook DAI while being more centralized than any major stablecoin. The concentration at Binance creates single points of failure. If Binance faces regulatory issues, user access problems, or security breaches, 87% of USD1 becomes vulnerable instantly.
Crypto communities on social media pointed out the contradiction immediately after Forbes published the analysis. Users questioned whether USD1 qualifies as decentralized finance when one platform holds nearly all the supply.
The Trump family connection to both the stablecoin and the pardoned exchange founder added political dimensions to technical concerns.
Some industry observers defended the arrangement. They argued that Binance provides liquidity and infrastructure that helped USD1 scale quickly. Without that partnership, reaching $5 billion in 10 months would have been much harder. From this view, concentration enabled rapid growth.
Others see potential conflicts of interest. The family profiting from USD1 granted the pardon to CZ. The stablecoin then concentrated heavily on CZ’s exchange. Each connection alone might not mean much. Together, they create optics problems at a minimum, visible as part of today’s crypto news reporting.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2026/02/10/crypto-news-trumps-usd1-tops-dai-but-87-of-supply-sits-on-binance/
