Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social (DJT), announced that starting August 1, it will sell millisecond-level real-time data of Trump posts to hedge funds. This is not an isolated incident. From SPAC listings to a $2.5 billion Bitcoin treasury, a $6 billion nuclear fusion merger, and now data licensing, this company, with quarterly revenue of less than $1 million, has been systematically monetizing Trump's influence over the past two years. On the same day, CNN reported that Trump publicly praised companies on Truth Social after buying stock in 21 of them.

Truth Social has finally given a price tag to its most valuable asset.

According to reports from several media outlets including Fast Company on July 16, Truth Social's parent company Trump Media & Technology Group (Nasdaq: DJT, hereafter Trump Media) announced the launch of Truth API, providing millisecond-level real-time data pushes for the top 10 high-influence accounts on Truth Social to institutional clients, officially launching on August 1.

Trump Media's interim CEO Kevin McGurn stated in a press release, "The market has already been fluctuating due to Truth Social posts," and that Truth API is part of the company's strategy to "monetize proprietary assets through high-margin, recurring revenue streams." The company claims to have signed some clients before the launch, but pricing has not been disclosed.

Viewed in isolation, this is merely a social media platform opening an enterprise-level API, similar to what X and Reddit have done. However, within the context of Trump Media's monetization path over the past two years, Truth API signifies that the company has completed the loop from "selling stock" to "selling influence itself."

From SPAC listing to selling API: A full review of the two-year monetization path

The monetization logic of Trump Media has never followed the traditional media company model of advertising and subscriptions. The company's revenue in Q1 2026 was only $871,200, which is insufficient for the annual salary of a senior engineer in Silicon Valley. During the same period, it reported a net loss of $405.9 million, of which $368.7 million came from unrealized losses on digital assets and equity securities.

What this company has truly been selling is the influence and attention of Donald Trump himself. The monetization methods have undergone several iterations:

In March 2024, Trump Media went public through a SPAC, directly converting Trump’s political influence into equity value, with DJT briefly soaring above $40. This was the most crude form of monetization, essentially using meme stock logic to harvest retail investor sentiment.

In January 2025, the company launched its fintech brand Truth.Fi, initially allocating $250 million to Bitcoin and ETF products. The same year, it partnered with Crypto.com to launch an "America First" themed ETF and applied for a Bitcoin spot ETF. By May 2025, Trump Media announced it had raised over $2.3 billion through stock issuance and convertible bonds to establish a Bitcoin treasury. The rationale behind this operation was: since DJT stock itself was volatile like a cryptocurrency, it made sense to bet the balance sheet directly on Bitcoin, leveraging BTC's price increases to boost company valuation.

As of Q1 2026, Trump Media held 9,542 BTC (worth approximately $767 million, with an average price of $118,529) and 756 million CRO (worth approximately $54 million), with total assets skyrocketing from $759 million a year ago to $2.2 billion. The cost was also evident: Bitcoin fell by 22% in Q1, contributing over $400 million in unrealized losses.

In December 2025, Trump Media announced a merger with fusion company TAE Technologies, a fully stock transaction valued at over $6 billion. It didn’t matter if social media was not growing; they could use DJT’s stock as a currency to acquire real assets. However, by June 2026, the company abandoned plans to spin off Truth Social as an independent company.

Now comes the Truth API in July 2026. This step differs from all previous operations in that: Trump Media is now turning the fact that "Trump's posts can influence the market" into a product that can be directly purchased. No need for stock fluctuations or Bitcoin price changes; they are selling the distribution rights of content itself.

The "President's Press Room" turns into a paid data source

The uniqueness of Truth API lies in the fact that while many social platforms sell data interfaces, their top users are not the President of the United States.

Ethics lawyer Virginia Canter stated in an interview with CNBC that this represents "a huge conflict of interest." She noted that the president "has an obligation to convey information to the American people, and now he is doing so through a private channel, of which he is one of the largest shareholders."

Trump’s posts on Truth Social have directly influenced the market multiple times. His statements about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz affected oil prices; a post in spring 2025 regarding tariffs led to a stock market crash, followed by a post about retracting some tariffs that drove the market up again.

McGurn told Axios that prior to this, some companies spent months scraping Truth Social data without authorization, frequently violating the terms of service. The official API would legalize and productize this demand. He also revealed that Trump Media is in discussions with AI companies to license Truth Social data for large language model training.

Trump Media is building a complete data licensing system with Trump's content as its core asset.

CNN’s investigation released on the same day: Posting praise for the same company days after buying stock

The timing of the Truth API announcement is particularly notable. On the same day (July 16), CNN released a poll result: Trump posted praise for companies on Truth Social days after buying stock in 21 of them, with some posts also announcing potential government actions favorable to those companies.

CNN used AI tools to compare Trump’s Truth Social posts database with the entire stock trading list in his annual financial disclosures, discovering that Trump executed at least 44 stock purchases involving 21 companies within a week, followed by posts praising those companies.

Specific cases include: in early April 2025, Trump’s account purchased between $200,000 to $500,000 of Nvidia stock, and a few days later he celebrated Nvidia’s expansion in the U.S. on Truth Social, promising that "all necessary permits would be expedited." He invested at least $4 million in Tesla last year, including purchases made before he released a video of himself and Musk admiring Tesla vehicles on the White House lawn.

The White House responded by stating that Trump’s assets "are held in a fully managed trust account by an independent third-party financial institution," and that Trump and his family have "no control" over which stocks to buy or sell.

The coincidence of these two events happening on the same day may just be a coincidence. But viewed together: on one side, the president's posts are in fact moving the market; on the other, the president's company is formally turning the "priority access" of these posts into a paid product.

With quarterly revenue of less than $1 million, what supports a $2.4 billion market value?

As of July 13, DJT's stock price was $8.56, with a market value of approximately $2.37 billion. The stock price has dropped over 56% in the past year and down nearly 80% from over $40 before Trump took office.

However, Trump Media's valuation has never been supported by its revenue. The company's total assets in Q1 were $2.2 billion, of which financial assets accounted for about $2.1 billion. The Bitcoin treasury, Truth.Fi financial product line, expectations from the TAE merger, and now the expectations of Truth API data licensing revenue form a narrative framework for a "Trump concept holding company."

How much revenue Truth API will generate is still uncertain. The company has not disclosed pricing or the number and scale of signed clients. For reference: X’s enterprise-level API basic package costs $42,000 per month; Reddit also made data licensing one of its core revenue narratives before its IPO. But X has a global user base, Reddit has a massive amount of UGC content, while Truth Social's core asset is highly concentrated on one individual. This is both an advantage (scarcity) and a risk (single-point dependency).

Trump Media's monetization journey over the past two years can be summarized in four steps: using SPAC to turn influence into equity value, using a Bitcoin treasury to enlarge the balance sheet, using the TAE merger to broaden the holding company narrative, and using Truth API to turn the information advantage itself into a product. Each step aims to convert the fact that "Trump can influence the market with a post" into more direct and quantifiable revenue.

Previous presidents typically avoided conflicts of interest by selling personal stocks, divesting business interests, or placing assets in blind trusts. Trump has refused to take these measures. For market observers, the issue is no longer whether "Truth Social can make money", but whether a sitting president's social media platform selling its information advantage at a clear price to Wall Street has any boundaries in regulation and ethics?