Trump Media & Technology Group announced a paid API service on Thursday that will give financial firms and news organizations licensed, real-time access to public posts from Truth Social’s most influential accounts. The Truth API is being marketed as a direct feed of market-moving information, with President Donald Trump’s 12.9‑million‑follower account serving as its primary draw. Interim CEO Kevin McGurn said the feed provides “immediate, verified access” and will generate recurring revenue beyond advertising and subscriptions.
The launch comes only hours after a CNN investigation revealed that Trump promoted over 20 companies on Truth Social within a week of buying their stock. Using AI-assisted analysis of roughly 21,000 financial transactions from Trump’s 2025 disclosure, reporters found at least 44 purchases across 21 companies that preceded favorable posts. A standout example: on April 15, 2025, Trump teased “very big and exciting news” about Nvidia’s plans to build AI supercomputers in the US, days after acquiring up to $500,000 in Nvidia shares. The disclosure also showed he bought up to $1 million of Nvidia stock on January 6, before loosening export controls for chip sales to China a week later.
The conflict of interest concerns extend directly to crypto. Trump’s 2025 financial form lists $1.4 billion in crypto‑related earnings, including more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial and $600 million from the $TRUMP memecoin. That figure has already influenced negotiations over the CLARITY Act, a crypto market‑structure bill, as Congress crafts ethical guardrails to limit officials from profiting off digital assets.
Ethics experts are alarmed. Virginia Canter of the Democracy Defenders Fund called the paid API “a huge conflict of interest,” arguing that presidential information should be distributed freely. Dan Greenberg, a former Labor Department advisor, labeled the overlapping trades and posts “an ethics disaster.” Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the Nvidia trades in a Senate hearing, while Bessent defended the president, saying Trump was not “engaging in a high‑frequency trading strategy.”
As Trump Media turns the presidential megaphone into a licensed data product, the $TRUMP memecoin and the broader crypto market face heightened regulatory scrutiny, with the CLARITY Act’s future now squarely in focus.
