Truth Social, for all its political reach, has an audience that skews toward a demographic less associated with active trading than the crypto-native and sports betting users who have driven prediction market growth. Crypto.com’s other partners are bringing it volume. The Truth Social deal was always more about brand association than market depth.
CRO fell as much as 5% after the news broke. That is the market’s assessment of how much the Trump Media partnership was worth to Crypto.com’s token price. Not very much, it turns out.
The Trump Family Connection Gets More Complicated
The failed Truth Social prediction market deal sits alongside the Trump family’s existing, more durable relationships with the two dominant platforms in the space. Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket, having invested in the latter through his firm 1789 Capital. He also sits on Trump Media’s board and serves as the sole trustee of his father’s 41% stake in the company.
So the Trump family simultaneously holds advisory and investment positions in Kalshi and Polymarket, sits atop the company that just abandoned its own prediction market product, and controls a social media platform that is now positioning itself as a data licensing business to trading firms. McGurn confirmed Truth Social’s API business, which sells real-time post access to high-frequency trading firms, now has about ten customers.
That is the Truth API product we covered in our piece on Truth Social’s paid early access service last month, and what we noted then still holds: selling millisecond-faster access to presidential posts to algorithmic traders, while the president’s son advises the platforms those traders use, is a set of relationships that the CFTC has not yet addressed publicly. The failure of Truth Predict does not simplify that picture. It just removes one element from it.
Where the Prediction Market Traffic Goes Now
Truth Social was never going to be a major prediction market venue. Its user base is real but is extremely niche. The platform’s content is political, and while political markets are popular on Kalshi and Polymarket, they represent a fraction of overall volume. The infrastructure investment required to build a functional prediction market exchange was always a poor fit for a media company trying to monetize audience reach.
McGurn’s reframe, distribution partner rather than operator, is the smarter play here. Truth Social’s audience and data can drive traffic to established platforms without requiring Trump Media to build compliance infrastructure, manage settlement disputes, or navigate the regulatory fights currently running in seven federal circuits. The company gets the upside of prediction market association without the operational and legal burden.
Kalshi and Polymarket are presumably the most natural beneficiaries. Both have Trump family connections, and both have the product. Neither needs to share revenue with a media company to reach Truth Social’s audience when that audience is already using their platforms. The question of whether a formal distribution arrangement with Truth Social ever materializes, or whether the existing relationships between the Trump family and both platforms are sufficient, is now back on the table.
Truth Predict never launched. The Crypto.com partnership is over. Prediction markets on Truth Social, as a product, are finished. As a business relationship, the story has a few more chapters.
Prediction Market Analyst
Colin Lynch is a sports betting, iGaming, and prediction markets journalist covering the intersection of sports, wagering, and regulation across the global gambling industry. Colin Lynch is a veteran gambling industry journalist with more than a decade of experience covering the rapidly evolving sports betting...
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