Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), a publicly traded media company controlled by the U.S. president’s family, announced a plan to buy $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin on Tuesday.
The company, which operates Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, will raise funds for the purchases by offering $1.5 billion worth of its stock and $1 billion worth of debt financing to 50 unnamed institutional investors, according to a statement it released on Tuesday.
The $2.5 billion, which at Bitcoin’s current price of $110,000 amounts to more than 22,500 tokens, will be used to create a “Bitcoin treasury,” according to the company. A Bitcoin treasury is a stockpile of the cryptocurrency held long-term by a government or company, often for the purpose of diversifying the entity’s assets and hedging against inflation.
“We view Bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom, and now Trump Media will hold cryptocurrency as a crucial part of our assets,” TMTG’s CEO and former congressman Devin Nunes said in the statement.
TMTG’s investment will make it the third-largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, behind Michael Saylor’s company Strategy with $63 billion worth of Bitcoin, and crypto mining company MARA with $5 billion worth of Bitcoin.
The news of TMTG’s pending investment comes after the company denied a Financial Times report on Monday that it planned to buy $3 billion worth of Bitcoin, during which it called FT a “fake news” outlet.
This is not TMTG’s first foray into the crypto industry. In March, the company announced it would partner with crypto exchange Crypto.com to launch exchange-traded funds to give investors access to the price movements of cryptocurrencies and other traditional securities on the stock market.
The concept of holding a “Bitcoin treasury” has become popular among entities close to the president. In March, Trump signed an executive order to establish a national Bitcoin reserve for the U.S. government, consisting of crypto that the government has seized from illicit activities to harness “the power of digital assets for national prosperity.”
More recently, Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm formerly led by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, announced a partnership with other companies including stablecoin giant Tether to launch a new entity called Twenty One Capital. The company plans to hold 42,000 Bitcoins when it eventually goes public, seeking to serve as an investment vehicle for people or companies looking to access Bitcoin’s price movements.