Trump Media posts $238 million loss as crypto strategy weighs

Trump Media & Technology Group reported a $238 million second-quarter loss Monday and said it will refocus on social media after branching into businesses including cryptocurrency, online betting and energy investments.

The company, which owns President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform, said the loss for the three months through June was more than 10 times larger than the loss it reported in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose to $1.7 million, up 89% from a year earlier, according to the BBC; The Guardian reported the figure was more than double the year-earlier period.

The company said its overall loss was driven by the drop in cryptocurrencies. It ended the quarter with total assets of $2 billion and about $1.9 billion in financial assets, including cash, short-term investments and digital currencies, according to the BBC. The Guardian reported that Trump Media had more than $400 million in cash and short-term investments at quarter’s end, along with $1.2 billion in bitcoin and bitcoin-related assets.

Kevin McGurn, Trump Media’s interim chief executive, said the company would shift more attention back to social media after a yearlong push into other areas.

“We made the disciplined choice to pivot in order to invest more time and resources in our most important initiatives,” McGurn said on a conference call, according to The Guardian. “We will say no to things or change course as warranted.”

A central part of that strategy is Truth API, a paid service that gives Wall Street trading firms faster access to posts on Truth Social by Trump and other influential users. Trump often uses the platform to make announcements, and the service has been viewed as a way to give traders an edge in stocks, bonds, interest rates and other heavily traded assets that may move after major policy statements.

McGurn said more than 10 customers have signed up. The Guardian reported that the service is charging $60,000 to $100,000 a month and that most early customers are high-frequency trading firms, which buy and sell securities in milliseconds.

The service has drawn scrutiny from watchdogs and legal experts because Trump’s family remains the company’s majority shareholder. Kathleen Clark, a Washington University School of Law professor and government conflicts-of-interest expert, told The Associated Press last month that Trump is “selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president.” She called it “yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself,” according to The Guardian.

McGurn rejected those concerns, saying similar data services are common.

“Providing licensed real-time public data through commercial APIs is a well-established business practice across the technology, financial information and media industries,” he said. “This is no different.”

Trump Media said the new service is “expected to provide the company with a new revenue stream.” McGurn said shareholders should expect “more frequent communication from us on our progress each quarter as we enter this next chapter.”

The company has not turned a profit. Markus Thielen, an analyst at 10x Research, told the BBC that Trump Media is more of a crypto holdings firm “wrapped around” a media company, and that most of its losses have come from that strategy.

While the company is refocusing on social media, McGurn said it still plans to pursue a previously announced merger with energy company TAE Technologies by the end of the year, The Guardian reported. The company also has $1 billion in debt from special convertible notes due in 2028, though lenders have an option to demand repayment in November, according to The Guardian.