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The Trump family media company has said it will raise $2.5bn to buy bitcoin as it seeks to ride a wave of enthusiasm for digital assets.
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which runs the Truth Social app and is controlled by Donald Trump’s family, said on Tuesday that it would raise $1.5bn in fresh equity and another $1bn through convertible bonds, the proceeds of which will be used to create a “bitcoin treasury”.
The deal, first reported by the Financial Times, marks the latest example of a group raising funds in traditional markets to purchase digital assets. Bitcoin, the biggest digital token by market value, hit a record high above $110,000 last week on growing signals that regulators will take a far more lenient approach to crypto under the Trump administration.
Trump has pledged to make the US the “crypto capital of the world”. Members of the president’s inner circle including vice-president JD Vance, Donald Jr and crypto tsar David Sacks are expected to speak at a big meeting of crypto investors in Las Vegas this week.
The president and his family and associates are also involved in numerous crypto ventures, including so-called memecoins that have no value beyond speculation, and stablecoins, which are designed to track the value of a sovereign currency, such as the US dollar.
Bitcoin is “an apex instrument of financial freedom, and now Trump Media will hold cryptocurrency as a crucial part of our assets”, said TMTG chief executive and chair Devin Nunes.
“It’s a big step forward in the company’s plans to evolve into a holding company by acquiring additional profit-generating, crown jewel assets consistent with America First principles,” he added.
Shares in TMTG, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker DJT, fell as much as 7 per cent on Tuesday morning. Trading volume was almost 40 times the average for this time of day, Bloomberg data shows.
A person close to the deal said TMTG’s offering had been increased in size in recent weeks because of “astronomical levels of demand”.
TMTG’s approach is similar to that used by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, previously called MicroStrategy, which sells shares and convertible bonds to buy bitcoin, supporting the price of the so-called digital gold and its own shares at the same time.
Strategy’s success has spawned numerous copycats. American Bitcoin, which is backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, in May announced an all-share merger with Gryphon Digital Mining to create “the most investable bitcoin accumulation platform in the market”.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive Asset Management and Nasdaq-listed investment group Asset Entities, which announced a proposed merger earlier this month, said on Tuesday that they hoped to raise as much as $1.5bn to support a “first wave of bitcoin acquisitions”.
TMTG said on Tuesday it had entered into agreements with about 50 institutional investors. Yorkville Securities and Clear Street acted as co-lead placement agents on the $2.5bn offering, with BTIG and Cohen & Company Capital Markets acting as co-placement agents.
Cantor Fitzgerald — which is run by Brandon Lutnick, the son of Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick — acted as financial adviser.
TMTG added that its investment in cryptocurrencies would “help defend our company against harassment and discrimination by financial institutions, which plague many Americans and US firms”.
On Monday, TMTG had said in a statement following the FT’s initial report on the deal that “apparently the Financial Times has dumb writers listening to even dumber sources”.
