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The World Liberty Financial website arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. 

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance venture backed by President Donald Trump and his family, has launched a stablecoin, joining an increasingly crowded market.

The company said Tuesday that the stablecoin, dubbed USD1, will be pegged to the U.S. dollar and be backed by short-term U.S. government treasuries, U.S. dollar deposits, and other cash equivalents. It will soon go live on the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain networks.

“USD1 provides what algorithmic and anonymous crypto projects cannot — access to the power of DeFi underpinned by the credibility and safeguards of the most respected names in traditional finance,” said World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff. “We’re offering a digital dollar stablecoin that sovereign investors and major institutions can confidently integrate into their strategies for seamless, secure cross-border transactions.”

The market cap for dollar-backed stablecoins — cryptocurrencies that promise a fixed value peg to another asset — has been climbing to new all-time-highs this year and has grown more than 46% in the past year, according to Crypto Quant. Currently dominated by Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USDC, these “systemically important” crypto assets are largely used for trading on centralized and decentralized exchanges and as collateral in DeFi. Crypto investors watch stablecoins closely for evidence of demand, liquidity and activity in the market.

The drumbeat for using stablecoins to help preserve the hegemony of the U.S. dollar has also grown louder in recent months. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at this month’s inaugural White House Crypto Summit that “we are going to keep the U.S. the dominant reserve currency in the world and were going to use stablecoins to do that.”

At last week’s Digital Asset Summit in New York City, Trump addressed attendees virtually, saying the industry “will unleash an explosion of economic growth, and with the dollar back, stable coins, you’ll help expand the dominance of the U.S. dollar.”

WLFI is the latest company to join an increasingly crowded market. PayPal and Gemini are among the many U.S. stablecoin issuers. In December, Ripple announced its new stablecoin, called ripple USD, or RLUSD. A month earlier, a consortium of companies including Robinhood, Galaxy Digital and Kraken launched their Global Dollar, or USDG, and joint stablecoin network, the Global Dollar Network.

Stablecoin legislation is widely seen as the lowest hanging fruit for crypto legislation, which most market participants hope will be passed and implemented sometime this year. The GENIUS Act, which seeks to provide a framework for regulating stablecoins, was recently advanced out of the Senate banking committee with bipartisan support. When the U.S. does get legislation on stablecoins, it’s expected that banks will begin issuing their own as well to take advantage of their ability to make payments faster, cheaper and more transparent.

Circle's global policy head weighs in on two bills regulating stablecoins

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar electric vehicle sits parked at an EVgo charging station in Los Angeles, California, on May 15, 2024.

Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Waymo said it will begin testing in Philadelphia, with a limited fleet of vehicles and human safety drivers behind the wheel.

“This city is a National Treasure,” Waymo wrote in a post on X on Monday. “It’s a city of love, where eagles fly with a gritty spirit and cheese that spreads and cheese that steaks. Our road trip continues to Philly next.”

The Alphabet-owned company confirmed to CNBC that it will be testing in Pennsylvania’s largest city through the fall, adding that the initial fleet of cars will be manually driven through the more complex parts of Philadelphia, including downtown and on freeways.

“Folks will see our vehicles driving at all hours throughout various neighborhoods, from North Central to Eastwick, and from University City to as far east as the Delaware River,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

With its so-called road trips, Waymo seeks to collect mapping data and evaluate how its autonomous technology, Waymo Driver, performs in new environments, handling traffic patterns and local infrastructure. Road trips are often used a way for the company to gauge whether it can potentially offer a paid ride share service in a particular location.

The expanded testing, which will go through the fall, comes as Waymo aims for a broader rollout. Last month, the company announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York for testing, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. Waymo applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate autonomously with a trained specialist behind the wheel in Manhattan. State law currently doesn’t allow for such driverless operations.

Waymo One provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and is preparing to bring fully autonomous rides to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., in 2026.

Alphabet has been under pressure to monetize artificial intelligence products as it bolsters spending on infrastructure. Alphabet’s “Other Bets” segment, which includes Waymo, brought in revenue of $1.65 billion in 2024, up from $1.53 billion in 2023. However, the segment lost $4.44 billion last year, compared to a loss of $4.09 billion the previous year.

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Trump advisor Navarro rips Apple’s Tim Cook for not moving production out of China fast enough

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Trump advisor Navarro rips Apple's Tim Cook for not moving production out of China fast enough

Peter Navarro: 'Inconceivable' that Apple could not produce iPhones outside China

White House trade advisor Peter Navarro chastised Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside of China.

“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”

CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment on Navarro’s criticism.

President Donald Trump has in recent months ramped up demands for Apple to move production of its iconic iPhone to the U.S. from overseas. Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has increasingly boosted production in India, partly to avoid the higher cost of Trump’s tariffs.

Trump in May warned Apple would have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. In separate remarks, Trump said he told Cook, “I don’t want you building in India.”

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Analysts and supply chain experts have argued it would be impossible for Apple to completely move iPhone production to the U.S. By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.

Navarro said Cook isn’t shifting production out of China quickly enough.

“With all these new advanced manufacturing techniques and the way things are moving with AI and things like that, it’s inconceivable to me that Tim Cook could not produce his iPhones elsewhere around the world and in this country,” Navarro said.

Apple currently makes very few products in the U.S. During Trump’s first term, Apple extended its commitment to assemble the $3,000 Mac Pro in Texas.

In February, Apple said it would spend $500 billion within the U.S., including on assembling some AI servers.

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CoreWeave to acquire Core Scientific in $9 billion all-stock deal

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CoreWeave to acquire Core Scientific in  billion all-stock deal

CoreWeave founders Brian Venturo, at left in sweatshirt, and Mike Intrator slap five after ringing the opening bell at Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence hyperscaler CoreWeave said Monday it will acquire Core Scientific, a leading data center infrastructure provider, in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $9 billion.

Coreweave stock fell about 4% on Monday while Core Scientific stock plummeted about 20%. Shares of both companies rallied at the end of June after the Wall Street Journal reported that talks were underway for an acquisition.

The deal strengthens CoreWeave’s position in the AI arms race by bringing critical infrastructure in-house.

CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said the move will eliminate $10 billion in future lease obligations and significantly enhance operating efficiency.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.

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The deal expands CoreWeave’s access to power and real estate, giving it ownership of 1.3 gigawatts of gross capacity across Core Scientific’s U.S. data center footprint, with another gigawatt available for future growth.

Core Scientific has increasingly focused on high-performance compute workloads since emerging from bankruptcy and relisting on the Nasdaq in 2024.

Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 CoreWeave shares for each share they hold — implying a $20.40 per-share valuation and a 66% premium to Core Scientific’s closing stock price before deal talks were reported.

After closing, Core Scientific shareholders will own less than 10% of the combined company.

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