Trump Media Pulls Back From Crypto Deals Under Interim CEO McGurn

Trump Media and Technology Group has reportedly terminated its planned Cronos (CRO) treasury venture with Crypto.com and Yorkville Acquisition Corp. The companies also abandoned a related services agreement and a set of digital asset products.

Interim CEO Kevin McGurn told Axios on Friday that the crypto deals ended because the treasury sector became saturated. Trump Media will instead concentrate on Truth Social, data licensing, and its pending merger with fusion energy company TAE.

Why the Trump Media Crypto Deals Collapsed

The venture, announced last year, would have licensed the Trump Media brand. The resulting company was built around Crypto.com’s Cronos blockchain and its CRO token. At launch, the partners billed it as the first and largest publicly traded CRO treasury firm.

Yorkville Acquisition Corp, a blank-check vehicle created to take the venture public, agreed to the termination as well. However, Yorkville America’s America First ETFs, branded as Truth Social Funds, will keep operating.

The retreat also follows a bruising start to the year, when crypto markdowns drove a $406 million quarterly loss. McGurn said saturation among treasury companies, rather than regulatory pressure, drove the decision.

“We wanted to get focused,” Axios reported, citing McGurn.

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He added that staking CRO has become less central for Crypto.com, making a split logical for both sides. Meanwhile, CRO traded near $0.0513 on Friday, down 0.4% over 24 hours, according to BeInCrypto Markets data.

The token holds a market capitalization of roughly $2.4 billion, ranking 38th overall.

Prediction Markets Give Way to Data Licensing

Separately, the companies scaled back plans to embed betting features inside Truth Social. Trump Media had unveiled Truth Predict prediction markets, powered by Crypto.com Derivatives North America, last October.

The partners will now pursue a marketing arrangement that promotes Crypto.com’s prediction products to Truth Social users. McGurn argued that established operators already crowd that space, so running back-end infrastructure offered little return. He sees Trump Media as a distribution and data partner instead of a market operator.

That data push is already visible. The company’s Truth Social API business, an application programming interface (API) that sells platform data, now serves about 10 customers, up from roughly five. Most are high-frequency trading firms that feed the data into algorithmic strategies. McGurn said the firm is also courting large language model developers and prediction market platforms.

McGurn expects the TAE merger to close before year-end. Whether a slimmer Trump Media can turn Truth Social’s audience and data into durable revenue may become clearer once that deal lands.