As crypto-based prediction services attract a flood of attention and capital, the US president’s social media platform has announced plans to muscle in
Truth Social, the social media platform majority-owned by US President Donald Trump and his family, is launching a cryptocurrency-based gambling service that will compete directly with the wildly popular Polymarket.
The new service, Truth Predict, will allow Truth Social users to place crypto bets on the outcome of particular events, from sports contests to political races to shifts in the economy. Truth Social is operated by Trump Media & Technology Group, a publicly traded company.
Typically, individual predictions are framed as binary questions, such as: “Will Taylor Swift release a new original song by October 2?” or “Will Barcelona win the UEFA Champions League?”
Ahead of the US presidential election in 2024, when prediction markets first broke into the mainstream, they were pitched by their proponents as a superior alternative to traditional polling—a more efficient “source of truth.”
“With Truth Predict, we’re democratizing information and empowering everyday Americans to harness the wisdom of the crowd, turning free speech into actionable foresight,” said Devin Nunes, TMTG’s CEO, in a statement.
Truth Predict, which is being launched in partnership with an affiliate of the crypto exchange Crypto.com, is entering a field currently dominated by Polymarket and Kalshi, both of which recently raised funds at lofty multibillion-dollar valuations.
The launch of Truth Predict comes as Polymarket plots its return to the US after a period of exile that began during Joe Biden’s presidency. Polymarket left the country in 2022 as a condition of a settlement with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, a US regulatory body, which alleged the firm operated an unregistered derivatives trading market.
In November 2024, the home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan was raided by the FBI as part of an investigation by the US Department of Justice into whether the platform had continued to accept bets from US residents, in violation of the moratorium established under the settlement agreement. (Coplan was not arrested or charged.)
When Trump returned to the White House in January, the picture changed. Under the Trump administration, regulators have been abandoning litigation against high-profile crypto companies, and the DOJ has instructed prosecutors to turn a blind eye to certain crypto-related crimes.
In July, Bloomberg reported that the DOJ had ended its probe into Polymarket without bringing any charges, clearing the way for the company to return to the US.
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“If you had to point to one reason [crypto prediction markets] are able to come back to the US, you have to point to the Trump administration,” says Zach Hamilton, founder of crypto startup Sarcophagus, in an interview with WIRED. “Donald Trump. I mean, that’s it.”
Even before the arrival of Truth Predict, the Trump family had a financial interest in the spread of prediction markets in the US.
In January, Donald Trump Jr. joined Kalshi as a strategic adviser. Then, in August, Polymarket received an investment from 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm where Trump Jr. serves as a partner. As part of the deal, Trump Jr. joined Polymarket’s advisory board.
The ties between the Trump family and Polymarket, forged just as Polymarket was seeking reentry into the US, have drawn scrutiny from critics who claim the investment could amount to a conflict of interest. The deal creates an opportunity, they allege, for the Trump family to profit from changes in policy instigated by the Trump administration.
“No one is saying members of the president’s family cannot engage in normal capitalist activities in a capitalist country,” says Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project, an organization that seeks to scrutinize the behavior of elected officials. “But Polymarket is the subject of heated political controversy. As such, the investment reflects a significant conflict of interest—and an avoidable one.”
“Neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest,” says White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement to WIRED.
Polymarket, TMTG and 1789 Capital did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
The Truth Predict launch also tees up a scenario in which separate facets of the Trump family’s business empire could effectively compete against one another.
“From a venture capital perspective, many of us don’t like to invest in competing projects. We try to avoid that,” says Chris Perkins, managing partner at crypto VC firm CoinFund. “We try to identify category winners.”
Already, businesses connected to the Trump family are operating competing bitcoin treasuries. In June, a dispute broke out over which corporate entities were permitted to launch an “official” Trump-branded crypto wallet.
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