More than ten customers have signed up to Truth API, Trump Media’s paid service that gives traders priority access to posts on Truth Social before they reach the broader public.
The service launched at the start of August, and its early adopters are predominantly high-frequency trading firms paying between $60,000 and $100,000 a month, according to interim chief executive Kevin McGurn, who disclosed the figures on an earnings call.
The announcement came alongside a quarterly loss of $238m for the April-to-June period, more than ten times the loss Trump Media and Technology Group reported in the same quarter a year earlier. +
The company posted $1.7m in revenue for the quarter, which it said was up 89% year on year, but the overall result was dragged down by a drop in cryptocurrency valuations. Trump Media closed the second quarter with total assets of $2bn and financial assets of around $1.9bn, including cash, short-term investments and digital currencies.
The company’s strategy has drifted well beyond social media. It now holds cryptocurrency and has made clean-energy investments, and analyst Markus Thielen of 10x Research told the BBC that Trump Media is better understood as a crypto holdings firm “wrapped around” a media company, with the bulk of its losses stemming from that approach.
Truth API has raised questions about whether it is appropriate for a company majority-owned by the president’s family to charge for early access to his own public statements, given that those posts can and do move markets.
Trump Media acknowledged that the service is expected to generate a new revenue stream and said it believes Truth API will become a “meaningful” and “durable” source of income alongside advertising and digital assets.
McGurn said the company is also in early conversations with technology firms, news organisations and betting markets. The group says it intends to refocus on its social media mission, though those operations have yet to generate material revenue. Earlier this month, it quietly dropped plans to introduce prediction market features on the Truth Social platform.
