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The Triad

Trump’s Crypto Scheme: A Layer Cake of Corruption

America is a banana republic now.

Jonathan V. Last's avatar
Jonathan V. Last
November 19, 2024∙ Paid
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1. DJT

Yesterday the Financial Times reported that the Trump Media and Technology Group (DJT)—of which I am a shareholder1—was in talks to buy a cryptocurrency exchange.

This may not seem like much, but it’s a layer cake of corruption and it’s taking place in broad daylight. Walk through the layers with me.


(1) How is DJT going to buy anything? Isn’t the company a joke? This is such a good question. So far in 2024 DJT has reported a grand total of $2.6 million in revenue.

That’s not a typo.

I’d like to give you a sense of scale here. An individual McDonald’s restaurant brings in north of $3 million a year.

So DJT as a company does a bit less business than your neighborhood Mickey D’s. There’s a difference, though. Individual McDonald’s locations average somewhere around 15 percent profits annually.

DJT does . . . not.

In the third quarter of this year—just a three-month period—DJT lost $19 million. And this rate of spend is increasing. For all of 2023, DJT lost $33 million.


(2) So how does DJT have the money to buy a crypto exchange?

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