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“We view this as the first of several rulemakings the SEC will undertake to provide regulatory certainty for crypto assets after the Senate failed before the August recess to advance the Clarity Act on crypto market structure,” TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote in a client note sent after the SEC’s notice.

The proposal is expected to give a path to crypto firms enabling them to raise capital for projects without triggering SEC registration requirements, and the businesses are also expected to be provided an exit path for getting clear of the agency’s jurisdiction when they’re not engaged in hands-on management of the projects anymore.

Before this, Atkins and the agency had rolled through a lengthy series of crypto policy statements meant to clarify its regulatory position on digital assets, but the staff statements have little long-term durability. A formal rulemaking would be more difficult to reverse in the future.

But the rule will likely take further months to develop and finalize. This first stage will come with a comment period — typically two or three months — and be followed by a potentially lengthy rewrite.

Reg Crypto would join some of the other significant steps the agency has taken or is still working on to foster the U.S. crypto industry. One of the major moves was a joint stance with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on a “taxonomy” to define how they view various crypto assets and which jurisdictions they belong in. The agency is also still working on its tokenized securities approach, which Atkins routinely mentions as one of the SEC’s marquee crypto maneuvers.

Trump Media said it plans to revamp its digital asset treasury strategy after unrealized losses on crypto and securities helped push the company to a $238 million net loss in the second quarter.

The company reported $190.4 millio n in unrealized losses across its digital assets, pledged digital assets and equity securities in its Q2 earnings release on Monday.

Trump Media said the new framework is intended to preserve its long-term digital asset exposure while managing volatility and improving the productivity of its balance sheet.

Trump Media is the publicly traded company behind Truth Social, Truth+ and financial services brand Truth.Fi. The company is tied to US President Donald Trump, who is the sole beneficiary of a trust that held about 41.1% of Trump Media’s voting power as of Feb. 25, according to its latest annual report.

Related: Trump Media sells Wall Street low-latency access to Trump posts

Its Q2 filing shows the company is already using options to manage Bitcoin volatility and generate premium income, while deploying some BTC through lending and other yield-generating arrangements. 

The company also said it plans to direct more resources toward Truth Social, Truth+ and other parts of its media business as part of a broader shift in how it allocates capital.

Trump Media boosts Bitcoin holdings after Q2

Trump Media’s Bitcoin holdings were little changed during the second quarter before the company stepped up its direct Bitcoin exposure in July.

As of June 30, Trump Media held 9,477.16 Bitcoin, down from 9,542.16 BTC at the end of the previous quarter.

Separately, the company had pledged 2,077.34 BTC as collateral for its options strategy. Of its reported holdings, 4,260.73 BTC was serving as collateral for convertible notes. 

Related: Strategy turns 1,690 BTC into $108.6M STRC buyback

In July, the company sold Bitcoin-related securities worth $159.6 million and used the proceeds to purchase Bitcoin.

By July 31, Trump Media reported holding approximately 14,139 BTC, including pledged Bitcoin, worth about $890.5 million at the time.

Trump Media flags risks from Bitcoin yield strategy

Trump Media also warned that its efforts to earn additional income from its Bitcoin carry counterparty credit risk and the potential loss of its assets.

The company said it has deployed a portion of its Bitcoin holdings to third parties through lending, placement and other yield-generating arrangements, which it described as relatively new strategies.

Some of those counterparties may not be rated by major credit rating agencies and could default during market downturns, liquidity crises or other financial distress.

If an arrangement is unsecured, the company said it may be unable to recover its Bitcoin if a counterparty becomes insolvent. Trump Media is also limited in its ability to sell or pledge Bitcoin while it is deployed, while counterparties may use those assets at their discretion. 

Magazine: Bitcoin will never fall below $60K again: Nansen founder

Trump Media says it will overhaul how it manages its digital-asset treasury after crypto and securities losses contributed to a $238 million net loss in the second quarter. In its Q2 earnings materials, the company attributed $190.4 million in unrealized losses to its mix of digital assets, pledged digital assets, and equity securities, while describing a plan aimed at keeping long-term Bitcoin exposure but reducing balance-sheet volatility.

The publicly traded company—best known as the parent of social platforms Truth Social and Truth+ and the financial services brand Truth.Fi—linked the strategy shift to the need for a more resilient framework. The company noted that the changes are meant to improve the “productivity” of its balance sheet without abandoning its core digital-asset positioning.

Key takeaways

• Trump Media reported $238 million net loss in Q2, with $190.4 million tied to unrealized losses across digital assets, pledged digital assets, and equity securities.
• A new treasury framework is planned to preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure while managing volatility and improving capital efficiency.
• Bitcoin use in hedging and yield activity is already in place, including options-based volatility management and deployments of some BTC to third parties.
• The company increased direct Bitcoin exposure in July, moving from 9,477.16 BTC at quarter-end to about 14,139 BTC by July 31, including pledged BTC.
• Counterparty and liquidity risks are explicitly flagged for Bitcoin-yield strategies, including default risk and limits on selling or pledging deployed BTC.

Why Trump Media is changing its digital-asset plan

Trump Media’s shift comes as investors focus on how publicly traded firms balance crypto exposure with the accounting swings that unrealized losses can create. In its second-quarter reporting, the company said its existing digital-asset and securities positions generated significant unrealized markdowns. Those losses, it said, were part of what drove the quarter’s large net loss figure.

Rather than retreating from Bitcoin, Trump Media emphasized that the revamp is intended to “preserve” long-term exposure while addressing volatility and making the balance sheet work more efficiently. The company also said it plans to direct more resources toward Truth Social, Truth+, and other media operations, framing the treasury shift as part of a broader capital allocation change.

Because the group is tied to former U.S. President Donald Trump, the broader context matters for market watchers. The filing notes that a trust holding roughly 41.1% of Trump Media’s voting power as of Feb. 25 remains the sole beneficiary of Trump Media voting power, according to the company’s latest annual report.

What the Q2 filing says about Bitcoin strategy

Trump Media’s Q2 documentation indicates it is not treating Bitcoin purely as a long-term spot holding. Instead, the company described a framework that already includes options to manage Bitcoin volatility and generate premium income. It also reported using part of its BTC in lending and other yield-style arrangements.

As of June 30, Trump Media held 9,477.16 Bitcoin, down slightly from 9,542.16 BTC at the end of the prior quarter. Separately, it reported pledging 2,077.34 BTC as collateral for its options strategy. The company also said 4,260.73 BTC was serving as collateral for convertible notes.

That structure shows a balancing act: maintaining Bitcoin exposure while ring-fencing assets for derivatives and financing obligations. It also highlights how pledged collateral can constrain a company’s flexibility during drawdowns or liquidity events.

July: Bitcoin-related sales followed by increased BTC exposure

While the second quarter itself left Trump Media’s direct Bitcoin holding relatively stable, the company later stepped up its Bitcoin exposure in July. By July 31, Trump Media said it held approximately 14,139 BTC, including pledged Bitcoin, which it valued at about $890.5 million at the time of reporting.

The path to that increase was tied to an intermediate step: the company said it sold Bitcoin-related securities worth $159.6 million in July and used the proceeds to purchase Bitcoin. This matters because it suggests the company viewed those securities as a temporary component in its capital deployment rather than a permanent replacement for direct BTC exposure.

For readers tracking how non-traditional crypto entrants manage treasury assets, the key takeaway is that Trump Media’s exposure management appears active rather than passive. The company is also maintaining a portfolio where some Bitcoin remains tied up—through pledges and other arrangements—while the headline BTC totals can rise through incremental purchases.

Risks Trump Media says it faces with BTC yield activities

Trump Media’s filings do not just outline how it earns additional income; they also provide a clear warning about the trade-offs. The company stated it deployed a portion of its Bitcoin holdings to third parties via lending, placement, and other yield-generating arrangements, describing these as relatively new strategies.

According to the company, some counterparties may not be rated by major credit rating agencies. That increases the risk that counterparties could default during periods such as market downturns, liquidity crises, or other financial stress.

Trump Media also warned that if an arrangement is unsecured, it may be unable to recover its Bitcoin in the event a counterparty becomes insolvent. It added that its ability to sell or pledge Bitcoin can be limited while assets are deployed, and that counterparties may use the assets at their discretion.

These disclosures are especially relevant when paired with the company’s decision to revamp its treasury strategy. The new framework is positioned as a way to maintain long-term exposure and reduce volatility, but the filings indicate the risk is not only market-driven. It is also operational and credit-driven—tied to whether deployed Bitcoin is recoverable and how counterparties behave under stress.

In other words, the company is trying to enhance balance-sheet performance while accepting that yield-style BTC deployments can introduce new failure modes that typical spot holding does not.

What investors should watch next

Trump Media has flagged both accounting volatility from unrealized losses and credit/liquidity risk from its Bitcoin-yield counterparties. Going forward, investors will likely focus on how the company implements its revamped treasury framework—particularly whether it changes the share of Bitcoin deployed to third parties versus retained as pledged collateral or held directly, and how those choices affect reported results in subsequent quarters.

Bitcoin’s BTC$64,080.96 elite holders are quietly loading up again.

The number of wallets holding at least 10,000 BTC has climbed back to 90, a six-month high, according to analytics firm Santiment. Over the past eight weeks alone, the count of these “whale” wallets has risen by six, a 7.1% increase.

The move builds on a broader accumulation trend first flagged four days ago. Since July 29, wallets in the 10–10,000 BTC range (whales and sharks) have accumulated BTC worth $1.5 billion. Santiment noted at the time that the pattern of larger players accumulating while smaller holders sell raised the odds of a move above $70,000 versus a drop below $60,000.

Meanwhile, “micro” wallets have been steadily shrinking throughout August. Santiment links this divergence to two recent catalysts of uncertainty and doubt: The Coldcard hardware-wallet exploit, which drained roughly $120 million worth of bitcoin, and continued delays to the U.S. Clarity Act, the long-awaited crypto market-structure bill that the Senate has now pushed to September.

These trends point to a classic supply rotation, with coins shifting from smaller holders into the wallets of the largest investors, the so-called “strong hands.”

Trump Media and Technology Group terminated its planned Cronos treasury venture with Crypto.com and Yorkville on August 7. The retreat signals that the corporate crypto treasury thesis, built on the premise that holding tokens is a balance sheet strategy, is running into the same saturation problem it was supposed to solve.

On August 7, 2026, Trump Media interim CEO Kevin McGurn told Axios that the company had terminated the CRO Strategy venture, the services agreement, and the digital asset product suite that accompanied the original deal. The companies also abandoned a related prediction market integration. Yorkville Acquisition Corp, the blank check vehicle created to take the treasury venture public, agreed to the termination. McGurn cited saturation. The treasury sector, he said, had become crowded.

The deal between Trump Media and Crypto.com was announced with the kind of numbers that attract headlines. A $6.42 billion treasury play. A branded entity called Trump Media Group CRO Strategy. A SPAC vehicle to take it public. The premise was simple: acquire CRO tokens at scale, hold them on a public balance sheet, and let market appreciation create shareholder value. The strategy echoed what MicroStrategy had done with Bitcoin, but applied to a token that was orders of magnitude smaller in market capitalization, less liquid, and tied to a single exchange ecosystem. The termination, coming less than a year after the announcement, is not just a deal falling apart. It is the first major public admission that the corporate crypto treasury model may have structural limits that its promoters did not advertise.

What the CRO Strategy deal was supposed to build

The original announcement in August 2025 outlined a multi-layered financial structure. Trump Media would purchase approximately $105 million in CRO tokens, acquiring 684.4 million tokens at a price of roughly $0.153 per token. Crypto.com would purchase $50 million in Trump Media shares, creating a reciprocal ownership link between the media company and the exchange. The two parties would then form Trump Media Group CRO Strategy, a dedicated entity designed to function as a publicly traded digital asset treasury.

Yorkville Acquisition Corp, a blank check company, would serve as the public listing vehicle. The SEC filing described the venture as the first and largest publicly traded CRO treasury firm, a designation that was accurate only because no one else had attempted the same structure with that specific token.

The deal also included a services agreement covering digital asset product development and a prediction market integration called Truth Predict, which would embed betting features inside Truth Social using Crypto.com Derivatives North America as the infrastructure provider.

The combined structure tied Trump Media to CRO price performance in multiple ways: through direct token holdings, through the treasury entity, through the SPAC listing, and through the product integrations that assumed continued engagement with the Cronos blockchain ecosystem. The multi-layered exposure was presented as strategic depth at the time of the announcement. In retrospect, it created a situation where CRO price weakness propagated through every component of the deal simultaneously, amplifying the downside in a way that a simpler structure would not have.

The valuation environment that produced the deal was also unusual. At the time of the announcement, corporate crypto treasuries were attracting premium multiples from investors who treated token accumulation as a growth strategy. Trump Media’s management appears to have structured the CRO Strategy venture to capture that premium. When the premium disappeared and the valuation environment shifted, the economic rationale for the deal evaporated alongside it.

Why the parties walked away

McGurn framed the termination around focus and saturation rather than failure. “We wanted to get focused,” Axios reported him saying. He characterized the crypto treasury sector as overcrowded, arguing that the competitive dynamics had shifted since the deal was announced.

The saturation claim has some factual basis. Between the second half of 2025 and mid 2026, more than 30 public companies announced crypto treasury strategies of various sizes. Most were modeled on the MicroStrategy template: issue equity or convertible debt, buy Bitcoin, and report the holdings as a core balance sheet item. The Trump Media venture stood apart because it targeted CRO rather than Bitcoin, but the underlying logic was the same.

What McGurn did not say is arguably more revealing than what he did. He did not claim the deal was restructured or paused. He confirmed mutual termination, meaning all three parties agreed that the venture no longer served their interests. The services agreement was also terminated. The prediction market integration was downgraded from a full product to a marketing arrangement.

McGurn added that staking CRO had become less central for Crypto.com itself, making a split logical for both sides. That detail matters. If the exchange that issues a token is de-emphasizing it, the case for a third party to build a treasury around it weakens considerably.

The $406 million loss that changed the math

The termination did not occur in a vacuum. Trump Media reported a $406 million quarterly loss earlier in 2026, driven primarily by markdowns on its digital asset holdings. The loss was not a realized trading loss in the traditional sense. It reflected the accounting treatment of crypto assets under fair value rules, where price declines flow directly through the income statement.

For a company with limited operating revenue, a nine figure markdown on token holdings is not a rounding error. It is a thesis test. The crypto treasury model assumes that holding tokens creates long term value for shareholders. But the same model forces the company to report price declines as losses, creating quarterly volatility that public market investors tend to punish.

MicroStrategy, the original corporate Bitcoin treasury, has navigated this problem by leaning into it. The company rebranded as Strategy, made Bitcoin accumulation its primary corporate identity, and attracted a shareholder base that understood and accepted the volatility. Trump Media was not positioned to make the same bet. Its core business is a social media platform. Its shareholders purchased the stock for reasons that included but were not limited to the crypto treasury thesis. When the token holdings produced a loss that exceeded the company’s operating revenue by orders of magnitude, the strategic case for continuing became harder to make.

The regulatory environment added complexity. While McGurn explicitly denied that regulatory pressure drove the termination, the broader landscape has shifted. The GENIUS Act and related legislative efforts have introduced new compliance requirements for companies holding digital assets at scale. Whether those requirements directly affected the CRO Strategy venture or simply increased the cost of maintaining it is an open question that the termination announcement did not address.

The accounting treatment itself deserves closer examination. Under ASC 820, crypto assets held at fair value require quarterly mark to market adjustments. When token prices rise, the company reports unrealized gains that flow through its income statement, inflating earnings in ways that may attract shareholders who mistake accounting gains for operating performance. When prices fall, the reverse occurs, and the company must explain why its core business lost hundreds of millions of dollars in a quarter where nothing operationally changed. The asymmetry between the two scenarios creates a ratchet effect: the company captures enthusiasm during price increases but faces existential questions during declines. For a company like Trump Media, whose operating revenue from Truth Social was in the low tens of millions annually, a $406 million markdown made the treasury strategy the dominant item on the income statement, overshadowing every other aspect of the business.

Truth Predict and the prediction market retreat

The CRO Strategy termination was not the only product that got scaled back. Truth Predict, the prediction market feature that Trump Media unveiled in October 2025, was also restructured.

The original plan embedded betting features inside Truth Social, powered by Crypto.com Derivatives North America. Users would trade prediction market contracts without leaving the social media platform. The integration assumed that Truth Social’s user base represented a captive audience for event contracts on politics, sports, and financial outcomes.

Under the new arrangement, the companies will pursue a marketing partnership rather than a full product integration. Crypto.com will promote its prediction products to Truth Social users, but Trump Media will not operate the back end infrastructure. McGurn argued that the space was already crowded with prediction market operators and that running infrastructure offered little return compared to simply distributing someone else’s product.

The reasoning reveals a broader shift in how Trump Media sees itself. The company is moving away from operating crypto infrastructure and toward licensing its brand and audience as distribution assets. That pivot is visible in its API business, which now serves roughly 10 customers (up from about five), most of whom are high frequency trading firms that feed Truth Social data into algorithmic strategies. McGurn said the company is also courting large language model developers and prediction market platforms as API customers.

The transition from infrastructure operator to data licensor is a meaningful strategic shift. It reduces Trump Media’s exposure to the operational risks of running crypto products while creating revenue streams that do not depend on token price performance. Whether the data licensing business can generate enough revenue to replace the value that was supposed to come from the treasury venture remains to be seen.

The prediction market landscape that existed when Truth Predict was conceived looked different from the one that emerged by mid 2026. At the time of announcement, Polymarket was the dominant player and the only U.S. focused platform with meaningful liquidity. By August 2026, Kalshi had expanded into event contracts for political and financial outcomes, Robinhood had added prediction market features to its mobile app, and several crypto native platforms had launched competing offerings. The window for Truth Social to capture a meaningful share of the prediction market audience had narrowed considerably, and the cost of operating back end infrastructure for a feature that would compete with well funded competitors no longer justified the investment when a simpler marketing arrangement could provide the same user exposure at a fraction of the cost.

The API pivot also reframes Truth Social’s value proposition. Under the treasury model, Truth Social was a distribution channel for crypto products. Under the data licensing model, it is a source of sentiment signals that have value to financial firms. The platform’s concentrated user base, which skews toward politically engaged American adults, generates text and engagement data that reflects a demographic segment that is underrepresented in other social media sentiment feeds. High frequency traders and LLM developers are willing to pay for access to that signal precisely because it is different from what Twitter, Reddit, or Stocktwits provides. The commercial value of the platform may ultimately have less to do with how many users it retains than with how unique the data those users generate is.

What happens to Yorkville and the SPAC structure

Yorkville Acquisition Corp agreed to the termination alongside the other parties. The blank check vehicle was created specifically to take the CRO treasury venture public. Without that venture, the SPAC’s original purpose no longer exists.

However, one piece of the Yorkville structure survives. Yorkville America’s America First ETFs, branded as Truth Social Funds, will continue operating. These funds existed as a separate product line from the SPAC and were not dependent on the CRO Strategy venture for their investment thesis.

The survival of the ETF products while the SPAC terminates illustrates the fragmented nature of the original deal. What was presented as a unified strategic partnership between Trump Media, Crypto.com, and Yorkville was in practice a collection of loosely connected agreements. The treasury venture, the services agreement, the prediction market integration, and the ETF products could be separated because they were never truly integrated at the operational level.

For the broader SPAC market, the termination adds another data point to an already difficult environment. Blank check companies that target crypto related ventures have faced elevated scrutiny from the SEC, and the completion rate for crypto focused SPACs has declined steadily since 2024. The Yorkville termination does not set a legal precedent, but it reinforces the pattern of crypto SPAC deals that announce with fanfare and unwind quietly.

The economics of the SPAC structure also contributed to the deal’s fragility. Blank check companies carry a deadline for completing their acquisition or merger, typically 18 to 24 months from IPO. If the deal is not completed within that window, the SPAC must return capital to shareholders. This deadline pressure means SPAC targets are selected and structured under time constraints that do not always align with the pace at which crypto markets evolve. When the CRO Strategy venture was designed, the crypto treasury thesis was still generating investor enthusiasm. By the time the SPAC needed to close, the market had moved on.