New York
CNN
—
In the weeks before last fall’s election, shares of Trump Media & Technology Group spiked as traders bet Donald Trump would return to the White House and make Truth Social the platform for presidential communications.
Those wagers proved prophetic – if not lucrative.
Voters did return Trump to the White House and Truth Social is now the way the commander-in-chief announces everything from major military strikes to new fronts in the trade war.
And yet, many who own shares in the company with the ticker symbol “DJT” are sitting on sizable losses.
Despite Trump’s victory, Trump Media shares have lost nearly half their value (48%) since Election Day, badly trailing the S&P 500’s 5% gain over that span. If you look at just the time since Trump took office, Trump Media shares are down even more (56%).
The struggles of Trump Media reflect the fact that much of this stock’s rise was based on hype and momentum, not the underlying health of the business.
Even though its share price is deeply in the red this year, Trump Media is still valued at about $5 billion. That’s nothing to sneeze at – nearly equaling the value of Macy’s and Wendy’s combined.
And yet Trump Media’s fundamentals remain quite modest.
The owner of Truth Social generated just $821,000 in revenue during the first three months of 2025. Trump Media lost $32 million in the first quarter.
“By conventional measures, this stock is quite expensive. It’s a money-losing company with negligible revenue,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. “However, this stock has always defied conventional valuation metrics.”
In an effort to revive the share price, Trump Media has pushed into cryptocurrencies and promised to buy back vast amounts of its own stock.
Its main product, a social media platform catering to conservatives, has yet to take off in the mainstream even though it’s the go-to place to try to understand what the most powerful person on the planet is thinking and doing.
The good news for Truth Social is that daily active users for its app have more than doubled (+106%) over the past year to 359,000 in May, according to Simlarweb data shared with CNN.
The bad news is Truth Social remains tiny. Not only are its daily active users dwarfed by X’s (formerly Twitter) 131.9 million, its tally widely trails Threads (112.9 million) and Reddit (66.2 million), according to Similarweb.
Even Bluesky, which launched in 2023 as a rival to Twitter, has 10 times the daily active users as Truth Social.
Trump Media responded with a statement that accused CNN of “politically motivated drivel disparaging Trump Media, a company with $3 billion in liquid assets.”
But Truth Social still has only a small piece of the social media universe.
“Truth Social’s audience has been growing since Trump was inaugurated, but it is still a small player,” said David F. Carr, editor of insights news & research at Similarweb.
Carr noted that Truth Social app usage hit a record on Saturday, after Trump used the social media platform to announce the US military strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran.
“But even on that peak day, web traffic and app usage were less than 1% of what X attracted. Bluesky also had millions of more web visitors and app users,” Carr said.
Even some Trump Media investors are skeptical about Truth Social.
“I don’t see that as a growth area – and I don’t think they do either,” said Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management and a shareholder in Trump Media. “That’s why they’re going whole hog into crypto.”
Indeed, Trump Media is using one of its real strengths – plenty of cash – to go headfirst into crypto.
Trump Media recently filed paperwork seeking regulatory approval to launch an exchange traded fund (ETF) that would invest in bitcoin and another cryptocurrency called Ethereum.
The move came after Trump Media amassed a $2.5 billion war chest to buy bitcoin, creating what it described as one of the biggest bitcoin treasuries of any public company.
However, existing Trump Media shareholders’ stakes were watered down because the company sold stock to raise money for that push into buying crypto.
The moves have alarmed ethics watchdogs because Trump was elected with strong support from the crypto industry after he reversed his earlier criticism of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Trump has kept promises to promote crypto, including by launching a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and tapping crypto-friendly regulators.
After winning election in November, Trump transferred his dominant stake in Trump Media to a revocable trust. Yet Trump is the sole beneficiary of the trust and it is run by one of his sons, Donald Trump Jr.
Trump Media Chairman and CEO Devin Nunes has hailed his company’s push into crypto and financial technology.
“We aim to continue rapidly transforming Trump Media into an indispensable company for the expanding customer base of the Patriot Economy,” Nunes said in a statement earlier this month.
However, investors remain skeptical.
“Does the Trump name on an ETF get people to buy it? The jury is out,” Tuttle said. “They’re getting into crypto treasury, along with 60 other companies, kind of copying MicroStrategy’s playbook.”
MicroStrategy pioneered the strategy of scooping up cryptocurrencies and storing them on corporate balance sheets. While GameStop, Trump Media and others are now following suit, Tuttle noted that MicroStrategy is the only one being rewarded by investors right now.
In a bid to breathe new lift into Trump Media’s share price, the company announced plans this week to buy back up to $400 million of its own shares.
“It seems like a move to keep the stock propped up,” said Interactive’s Sosnick.
Nunes, the Trump Media CEO, said in a statement this week that the buyback amounts to a “vote of confidence” in the company, its stock and strategic plans. Nunes added that Trump Media’s $3 billion in cash gives it flexibility to take actions to “support strong shareholder returns.”
But it’s somewhat surprising to see a company that went public barely a year ago turning to stock buybacks.
Then again, much of the Trump Media story since its launch in 2021 has been unusual.
“If the whole bitcoin ETF thing doesn’t work and the market doesn’t reward crazy multiples for bitcoin treasury, there isn’t a lot of there there,” said Tuttle, the shareholder.
But Tuttle isn’t ready to give up on his bet yet, especially given that Trump’s time in the White House still has three-and-a-half years left.
“I would never bet against him,” Tuttle said. “Every time I think he’s done, he comes out stronger than before.”
