Apex Group, a global financial services provider overseeing more than $3.5 trillion in assets, has announced a partnership with World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a crypto company affiliated with U.S. President Donald Trump and his sons. The collaboration was unveiled at the World Liberty Forum held at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Wednesday, February 18, 2026.
The partnership centers on piloting WLFI's USD1 stablecoin as a payment rail for subscriptions, redemptions, and distributions across Apex Group's tokenized fund ecosystem. Apex, which provides administrative services to hedge funds, pension funds, banks, and family offices, stated the goal is to improve settlement speed and reduce operational overhead for its institutional clients.
"Clients increasingly want blockchain-based solutions that deliver tangible benefits and cost savings," said Apex CEO Peter Hughes in a statement. Zach Witkoff, co-founder and CEO of World Liberty, described USD1 as "infrastructure for a future financial services ecosystem" during the forum's opening remarks.
The announcement coincided with a significant price surge for the WLFI token, which jumped more than 23% to approximately $0.12 ahead of the Mar-a-Lago event, with 24-hour trading volume exceeding $466 million. The forum gathered lawmakers, Wall Street executives, and crypto leaders, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and CFTC Chair Michael Selig, to discuss crypto policy amid Senate deliberations on a comprehensive digital asset market structure bill.
As part of the collaboration, Apex will also explore making WLFI tokenized assets—such as real estate and infrastructure—available on the London Stock Exchange Group's (LSEG) Digital Market Infrastructure platform, pending regulatory approval. WLFI plans to launch a mobile app connecting traditional bank accounts with digital asset wallets for accessing tokenized holdings.
This move deepens Apex's blockchain focus, following its May acquisition of Tokeny, a Luxembourg-based firm specializing in on-chain real-world asset (RWA) infrastructure, and Globacap, a London-based investing platform. The partnership highlights the growing institutional interest in tokenizing traditional finance assets using blockchain technology.
