January 02, 2026
By Our Correspondent
Donald Trump’s media venture is pushing deeper into crypto—with politics close at hand.
Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent of Truth Social, has struck a partnership with Crypto.com to distribute digital tokens to its shareholders. For every full share owned, investors will receive one token, with access promised “in the near future”. The market approved, modestly: the firm’s shares rose about 5% on the day of the announcement.
The tokens are pitched less as financial instruments than as loyalty badges. Holders will periodically receive discounts and perks tied to Truth Social and its streaming offshoot, Truth+. Devin Nunes, Trump Media’s chief executive, described the scheme as a “first-of-its-kind” deployment of blockchain technology, enabled—he added pointedly—by improving regulatory clarity.
Crypto.com is no stranger to the Trump orbit. Nor is Mr Trump new to digital assets. In his second term he has styled himself a “crypto president”, dismantling restrictions imposed under Joe Biden and abandoning regulatory probes that Republicans had denounced as an attack on innovation. Crypto.com itself had received a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024; after January, such investigations quietly melted away.
The policy shift has been sweeping. Mr Trump has promised to make America the “crypto capital of the world”, announced a strategic digital-asset reserve at the Treasury (including bitcoin), encouraged the inclusion of cryptocurrencies in retirement accounts and moved to block states from imposing their own rules. At a March roundtable he praised industry leaders as “high-IQ people” and vowed to end Washington’s “war on crypto”.
The industry has responded in kind. Crypto firms and allied political committees donated generously to Mr Trump’s 2025 inauguration, and Crypto.com has deepened its commercial ties with Trump Media. Last year the media firm agreed to act as a treasury for Cronos, Crypto.com’s native token, and later partnered on Truth Predict, a market-forecasting—some say betting—platform.
Critics see conflicts everywhere. Although Mr Trump has placed many of his Trump Media shares in a revocable trust managed by his son Eric, he still stands to benefit from the company’s fortunes. The concern is less about legality than influence: endorsing the president’s family businesses may be a way to curry favour in a lightly regulated industry built on leverage and speculation.
That unease is sharpened by Trump Media’s own fragility. Founded in 2021, it has struggled to gain traction. Truth Social attracts roughly 6m monthly users, far fewer than its mainstream rivals. A newly announced merger with TAE Technologies, a fusion-energy firm, looks like another attempt to diversify and inject momentum.
Crypto tokens for shareholders may not solve those problems. But as politics, technology and personal branding blur, symbolism may matter as much as substance. In Mr Trump’s America, even equity can come with a digital souvenir.
