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CNN
—
Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group announced Wednesday it plans to expand into financial services and potentially buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Shares of Trump Media (DJT) climbed 8% on the news.
Trump Media said it plans to launch a fintech brand called Truth.Fi and to introduce investment vehicles that will focus on American growth, manufacturing, energy and the “Patriot Economy.” The push into fintech was telegraphed by a trademark application filed in November.
The moves by Trump Media, a company built on President Donald Trump’s brand, are likely to raise further conflict of interest concerns about the second Trump administration.
The company said its board of directors has also approved plans to diversify its cash holdings into exchange traded funds (ETFs), bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and crypto-related securities.
“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,” Devin Nunes, Trump Media’s CEO and a former Republican member of Congress, said in a statement.
Trump Media said it is teaming up with Charles Schwab to develop customized, separately managed funds and advise on investments.
Days before taking office, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump alarmed ethics watchdogs and even some in the crypto industry by launching a pair of meme coins.
Ethics experts are now expressing further concern about Trump Media’s push into finance and crypto because Trump is presiding over how the federal government regulates these industries.
“These business moves create even more opportunities for conflicts of interest: the various agencies that regulate the financial industry will now be controlled by people appointed by President Trump himself,” Delaney Marsco, director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, said in an email to CNN. “Those people will be faced with questions about how to handle matters that will impact the financial interests of their boss.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on these concerns.
Trump announced in December he transferred his dominant stake in Trump Media to a revocable trust of which he is the sole beneficiary. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is the sole trustee of the trust.
Richard Painter, the top ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said Trump’s transfer of his shares to the trust does nothing to ease conflicts of interest.
“The president of the United States is getting further and further into the crypto business – while he is invoking executive orders on crypto,” Painter, now a law professor at the University of Minnesota, told CNN in an interview.
Beyond the conflict of interest concerns, Painter expressed worry that Trump’s investments could further inflate asset prices in crypto markets to the point that they pose a systemic risk to the broader economy.
“We have a president who has asserted so much executive power across the board who is himself investing in assets,” Painter said. “This is a situation that could be quite dangerous for our economy.”
Trump Media said it expects that its Truth.Fi products and services will get rolled out later this year after “any necessary approvals by financial regulators are secured.”
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