Trump Media, the company that runs Donald Trump's social media platform Truth Social, is expanding into financial services that include fintech and crypto.
On Wednesday, the publicly traded company announced Truth.Fi, which will cater to “American patriots." It expects to offer financial products and services, including its own investment vehicles, later this year.
Trump Media plans to put up to $250 million in the venture, with brokerage firm Charles Schwab keeping custody of the funds. Samantha Schwab, a granddaughter of the firm's founder, recently became deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, CNBC reported.
Truth.Fi's funds could be allocated to separately managed accounts, customized exchange-traded funds, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, according to a news release. Its products would focus on “American growth, manufacturing, and energy companies as well as investments that strengthen the Patriot Economy,” according to the release.
Shares of Trump Media jumped 6.8% following the announcement, CNBC reported. Trump, who owns over 50% of the company, moved his $4 billion in shares in December to a revocable trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr.
Trump Media also has a web streaming service, Truth+, that started last October. Truth Social, created in 2021 after Trump was banned from Twitter, has 6.3 million active users.
“Truth.Fi is a natural expansion of the Truth Social movement: We began by creating a free-speech social media platform, added an ultra-fast TV streaming service, and now we’re moving into investment products and decentralized finance,” said Devin Nunes, who resigned from Congress to become CEO of Trump Media in 2022. “Developing American First investment vehicles is another step toward our goal of creating a robust ecosystem through which American patriots can protect themselves from the ever-present threat of cancellation, censorship, debanking, and privacy violations committed by Big Tech and woke corporations.”
If approved by regulators, the venture would mark Trump’s first foray into fintech and the first time a sitting president has started a financial company that invests and holds assets, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“They are posing massive challenges for financial regulators to do their job,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “There is every reason to expect [regulators] are not going to enforce the law against the Trump family business.”
It's not clear how Truth.Fi's financial products will differ from those offered by traditional banks, which Trump views as unfair to conservatives. The crypto community, courted by Trump during his campaign last year, also has complained of de-banking.
The announcement of Truth.Fi follows his public criticism of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase at last week's World Economic Forum.
“I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America,” Trump told the banks' CEOs, according to CNBC.
Bank of America said it "would never close accounts for political reasons," Business Insider reported.
Trump's other business ventures have raised conflict of interest concerns. He has appointed leaders of federal agencies who are expected to take a less aggressive approach to crypto. Last week he issued an executive order to govern digital assets, further aligning himself with an industry he and his family are invested in.
A few days before his inauguration, he and First Lady Melania Trump launched their own memecoins. The highly volatile digital currencies generated billions of dollars for the president, at least on paper, and prompted criticism from some in the crypto community who viewed them as a gimmick.
Trump and his sons are promoters of World Liberty Financial, a crypto trading business they started last fall with Steve Witkoff, a co-chair of Trump's inaugural committee and Middle East envoy. The Trumps are not owners or employees of the platform but can receive revenues from it.
The Trump Organization, run by Eric Trump, backed away from numerous foreign deals after Trump won the 2016 election but has signaled it won't do the same in his second term.
The company is planning several developments in the Middle East as a part of a global expansion, according to its website, including residential, hotel and golf projects in Oman, residential developments in Saudi Arabia and a hotel project in Dubai.
Read more
about this topic