Trump Media and Technology Group (NASDAQ: DJT) and Crypto.com are abandoning a plan that would have made Trump’s Truth Social the first social media platform to directly integrate prediction markets.
The decision is part of a wider alteration of the relationship between the media enterprise bearing the president’s name and the cryptocurrency brokerage firm. Crypto.com and Trump Media are also dropping plans to establish a digital asset treasury (DAT) company that would have purchased billions of dollars of CRO, a cryptocurrency established for use on the Cronos blockchain.
“CRO is the main cryptocurrency used in the Cronos ecosystem, which includes Cronos EVM, Cronos POS, and Cronos zkEVM. These chains are built to support decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming, and the broader Web3 economy,” according to Crypto.com.
A DAT is a publicly traded company whose primary function is to buy, sell and manage holdings in a digital currency. The president’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric, run American Bitcoin Corp. (NASDAQ: ABTC), a Bitcoin DAT. That stock has shed nearly three-quarters of its value this year.
Truth Social Prediction Market Effort Quickly Halted
Last October, Crypto.com and Trump Media announced a plan to feature event contracts offered by the prediction market operator directly on Truth Social.
At that time, Trump Media said beta testing would soon commence with an eye toward rolling out the prediction market offering to Truth Social users on a national basis. The offering was to be known as Truth Predict and the plan included sports derivatives, which account for significant percentages of volume on yes/no exchanges.
Upon announcing the deal with Crypto.com, Trump Media also noted that Truth Social and Truth+ users who possessed Truth gems — a digital reward for activity on the social media platform — would be able to convert the gems into Cronos and use that digital currency to trade event contracts.
Those plans didn’t come to life. The two companies didn’t comment on why the prediction market deal was halted, but Trump Media is holding its inaugural earnings conference call on Monday, so it’s possible more details on the end of the Crypto.com partnership deal will be revealed.
Crypto.com Will Be Alright
From a prediction market standpoint, Crypto.com can easily survive the loss of the Truth Social deal because the cryptocurrency exchange has several more visible, likely more lucrative prediction market partnerships in place.
