More Wall Street customers are signing up for a Trump Media & Technology Group service that allows earlier access to new Truth Social posts, a feature some economists are calling a form of insider trading.
Trump Media, founded by President Donald Trump in 2021, announced more than 10 customers have signed up for Truth API, or Application Programming Interface, a service that began earlier this month that gives Wall Street traders access to Truth Social posts from top users, including Trump, milliseconds before being published for the platform’s broader audience. Customers are charged between $60,000 and $100,000 per month for the service.
Interim CEO Kevin McGurn said during the company’s earnings presentation on Monday most Truth API customers are high-frequency trading firms, but it is in talks to sell the product to hyperscalers, large news organizations, and large-language model developers, as well as expand the tool for retail trading. McGurn said the product was in “early innings,” but the company was “strongly encouraged” by early progress.
“We believe this can grow into a meaningful, durable contributor,” McGurn said, “but it is just one piece of a broader media technology strategy that also includes advertising, subscriptions, and our digital asset treasury.”
The rollout of Truth API coincides with the company reporting a loss of $238 million between April and June, more than 10 times the magnitude of the quarterly losses a year ago, as it branched out beyond media, such as cryptocurrencies. The Truth API feature is part of the company’s turnaround plan focusing on social media.
The product underscores Trump’s ability to move markets by announcing major policy changes on the platform. In April, Trump posted he would pause planned strikes on Iranian infrastructures following threats contingent upon reopening the Strait of Hormuz, leading to a $1.5 trillion stock market rally.
Insider trading concerns
But the product, as well as Trump’s continued stake in the company, has garnered several ethical concerns. Trump owns about 41% of company shares for Trump Media, leaving him to benefit from the new revenue stream of Truth API subscribers, which at just 10 users, could drive up to $1 million in monthly revenue, or $12 million annually. The new feature, according to experts, effectively allows Trump to financially gain from his own official statements.
“I’ll be blunt,” Gian Luca Clementi, an economics professor at NYU Stern School of Business, told Fortune. “This is insider trading by definition.”
Last month, Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate Truth API, arguing a company with a large portion owned by a sitting president that sells market-moving policy announcements to traders faster than other users is a stark departure from a platform licensing regular data. He suggested even a small window of increased access to policy information could disrupt the level playing field in markets.
Trump Media & Technology Group did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment, but Shannon Devine, a spokesperson for the company, told Quartz Truth API “offers customers the fastest way to ingest publicly available Truth Social data” and that critics “must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information.”
Some legal experts, such as Tyler Gellasch, CEO of Healthy Markets Association and former SEC counsel, warned Truth API is part of a broader changing infrastructure of how finances are disclosed. The SEC is also considering allowing companies to forego quarterly financial disclosure in favor of semiannual ones, increasing the likelihood of a handful of well-resourced investors relying more on paid and private pieces of information. Truth API could be an example of one such information source.
“When you have a market that looks like that, it looks rigged,” Gellasch told Fortune.
During the earnings presentation, McGurn alluded to the “intense media coverage” about Truth API’s rollout, painting the feature as one of many licenced data sources.
“Providing licensed real-time public data through commercial APIs is a well-established business practice across the technology, financial information, and media industries,” he said. “This is no different.”
