Trump accused of wanting to make his stablecoin legal tender as Circle and Ripple begin ‘the stablecoin wars’

President Donald Trump is facing new heat after Representative Maxine Waters accused him of trying to ditch the dollar and swap in a stablecoin tied to his own family.

At a House Financial Services Committee markup hearing on April 2, Maxine told lawmakers that Trump had used his role in office to run what she called “multiple crypto schemes,” and pointed to a fresh stablecoin launched by World Liberty Financial, a company backed by Trump’s family.

Maxine said Trump’s team dropped the USD1 token in March, just months after his meme coin launch in January, and slammed the former president for pushing what she described as personal crypto ventures straight from the White House. She said:

“Trump likely wants the entire government to use stablecoins from payments made by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to Social Security payments, to paying taxes. And which coin do you think Trump would replace the dollar with? His own, of course.”

Waters slams Trump’s financial ties as committee debates stablecoin bill

Maxine, who serves as the committee’s top Democrat, warned that a new stablecoin bill would only open the door for more of this kind of behavior.

“With this stablecoin bill, this committee is setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent, validating the president and his insiders’ efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else,” said Maxine. She linked the whole push to Trump’s inner circle and said it could change how the U.S. financial system works.

The committee is reviewing amendments to the STABLE Act, along with new bills targeting illegal financial activity in crypto and attempting to block the creation of a U.S. central bank digital currency. The markup hearing is a required step before moving these proposals to a vote in the House of Representatives.

Crypto industry faces stablecoin wars as Trump sits in the middle

While the Trump controversy dominated the political side, crypto companies kept making moves. On the same day, Circle dropped its S-1 filing with plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker CRCL. The company is aiming for a $4 billion to $5 billion valuation, which is lower than expected.

Wyatt Lonergan from VanEck Ventures said this might be the start of a “stablecoin war,” with everyone from crypto firms to big banks trying to put out their own tokens. Wyatt said the market will want answers on where the industry is going and how stablecoins will actually be used at scale.

Ripple added more fuel to the fight as Jack McDonald, the company’s SVP of Stablecoins, posted on X that the company’s new RLUSD token was now fully integrated into Ripple Payments, its international payments tool. Jack wrote:

“As promised, RLUSD is now integrated into Ripple Payments — our cross-border payments solution with near-global coverage through 90+ payout markets, and instant connections to banks, FIs, payment service providers, exchanges and many more around the world.”

Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of Binance, jumped in with a comment at Jack that said: “Stablecoin war, I mean healthy competition, just getting started,” with a laughing emoji.