Trilateral Commission ties to USD1, RWA tokenization and who stands to profit
Since Trump, Bessent, Warsh, or other Techbros in Washington, DC don’t directly belong to the Trilateral Commission, I followed the money to see who benefits. The Trilateral Commission membership list (April 2025) shows multiple members positioned to profit from the USD1/RWA tokenization ecosystem and Tether. The pattern looks like institutional positioning more than coincidence.
What emerges is a convergence of interests: TC members at BlackRock, Goldman, Apollo, KKR, Coinbase, and Ribbit Capital are independently moving into tokenization infrastructure. USD1 is being shaped as a settlement layer these firms could use. Whether coordinated or not, the Commission’s North American roster reads like a who’s who of entities that profit from a programmable private dollar.
Here’s the lineup I traced and why it matters.
Faryar Shirzad — Chief Policy Officer, Coinbase — sits at the intersection of TC membership, exchange profit, and Washington lobbying. Coinbase is listed as an exchange partner for USD1 and was an Epstein Series C investment. Shirzad’s role means he can influence the regulatory framework that benefits USD1.
Yuga Cohler — Senior Staff Software Engineer, Coinbase, and a David Rockefeller Fellow — embeds Coinbase talent inside the Commission’s leadership pipeline. That puts engineering and institutional crypto strategy closer to policy conversations. Institutional influence often follows personnel.
Sigal Mandelker — General Partner, Ribbit Capital — brings fintech capital and regulatory experience together. Ribbit has backed Coinbase, Robinhood, and stablecoin infrastructure plays. As a former Undersecretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Mandelker bridges sanctions enforcement and the stablecoin debate.
Two TC members form the critical connective tissue into BlackRock and its tokenization play. Those links push traditional asset managers into tokenized products that can use USD1-style rails. The implications reach both capital markets and geopolitical asset flows.
- Laurence D. Fink — Chairman and CEO, BlackRock — BlackRock is building tokenized funds, notably the BUIDL tokenized fund, the world’s largest tokenized Treasury fund, and it uses Securitize as its tokenization platform. Securitize is also WLF’s RWA tokenization partner for the Maldives deal and planned issuances. Fink attended the WLF World Liberty Forum at Mar-a-Lago in February 2026.
- Thomas Donilon — Chairman, BlackRock Investment Institute — leads macro research and strategic positioning, including BlackRock’s $70B Bitcoin ETF footprint. His role aligns BlackRock’s macro view with tokenization and digital asset strategy.
Goldman and Apollo names show the investment bank and alternative manager angles. Both firms are already moving into technology policy and real-world-asset tokenization that could sit on USD1 rails.
- Jared Cohen — Co-Head of Applied Innovation and President of Global Affairs, Goldman Sachs — is Goldman’s point person on tech policy, linking AI and crypto regulatory conversations. Goldman CEO David Solomon’s attendance at the WLF World Liberty Forum in February 2026 signals institutional alignment with USD1 infrastructure.
- Scott Kleinman — Co-President, Apollo Global Management — represents an Apollo push into tokenizing private credit products that complement other institutional token platforms.
David Petraeus — Partner, KKR — highlights another private-equity angle. KKR has been tokenizing private equity and infrastructure assets, while TC members like Vance Serchuk and Luis Téllez Kuenzler extend that network inside the Commission. Tokenized PE feeds the same RWA market USD1 aims to serve.
Klaas Knot — President, Dutch Central Bank, and Chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) — is the regulatory chokepoint. The FSB sets global standards for systemic stablecoins, so Knot’s decisions could determine whether USD1 achieves systemic reach or is constrained.
Other banking and central bank figures on the Commission include:
- Ajay Banga — President of the World Bank
- Mugur Isarescu — Governor, National Bank of Romania; former Prime Minister
- Angelos Gregoriades — Non-Executive Board Member, Central Bank of Cyprus; business consultant
- Signe Krogstrup — Governor, National Bank of Denmark
- Olli Rehn — Governor, Bank of Finland; former European Commissioner
Given this cast of institutions and individuals, every company represented on the Commission looks strategically primed to exploit USD1 and Tether’s infrastructure. From a Republican perspective, that concentration of influence between policy, money managers, and tokenization firms is exactly the kind of elite capture that deserves scrutiny.
It is reasonable to conclude these networks position certain interests to extract enormous gains if USD1 becomes the dominant private dollar—potentially not just billions, but trillions.