this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Putting aside any feeling you may have for or against Trump, WTF does TMTG do? From what I can tell, it runs Truth Social and is planning to launch a streaming service.

I did some quick googling and Truth Social appears to be a mastodon instance with a non-default backend that is free to use with 600k active monthly users.

Facebook alone (not including other META products) has 2.9 billion active monthly users.

What’s so valuable about it? Sure, they are probably running ads. But why would someone advertise on Truth Social over Facebook? Is the conversion rate somehow better on truth social?

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

From stock sales? Are they buying directly from the company? If not, I don’t think the company sees the money

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

The idea was that the Saudis and Russians pump money into the stock to keep the price propped up until Donny can cash out, but that only works if you have enough cash to backfill the volume ratio as needed. It would work a lot better if they could have been quieter about it, but Trump basically makes billions as long as the price doesn't actually go to zero since his shares are grants for using his "brand."

It's not so much money laundering as a completely legal path for foreign agents to buy favors from a possible US President.

[–] nomous 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are they buying directly from the company?

Exactly, you guarantee you'll buy shares of my company and I guarantee I'll make decisions that benefit you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Usually you buy from a market maker though

[–] nomous 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In this scenario the market maker and the briber are the same person.

Market makers only need to be willing to buy like 100 shares, that'd be pretty trivial for people with resources.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That’s less than $2k… Is the trade volume that low?

[–] athairmor 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It’s not valued based on any normal metric. It’s pure meme, speculation, cult and money laundering.

I doubt many investors even look at conversion rates.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Non Flushable Turds?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

But why would someone advertise on Truth Social over Facebook?

Because I could sell star spangled shit on a shingle to that lot for a premium.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What’s so valuable about it?

Nothing.

It's a very unusual situation.

It's basically a proxy for a bet on whether Trump will get a second term. That's why it took a dump after the debate didn't go well.

Supporters want to say they have some TMTG shares, and are happy to pay absurd prices for shares without reference to the actual value.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And outside the cult, it's a bet that Truth Social would become a vector for bribing the president of the United States. If people are going to bribe Trump by pumping his share price, you can get a cut.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

TMTG has a huge net operating loss. I think that the way the company is bribed is in investment funds.

However, I don’t think they are bribing him by pumping his share price. IIRC (take this with a hugeeeee grain of salt) the share price is determined by the last transaction price. If you place a market order, it’s the sell prices that would fulfill your order amount. On the other hand, a limit order is fulfilling your order at a set price. It would take consistent investment over time to create enough transactions to keep the stock price high.

Hence, I think TMTG is receiving large cash infusions and Trump is getting paid through bonuses or something similar. Cheaper and more direct

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Oh come on just because we hate Trump doesn't mean we should kid ourselves, there's a lot of value to having access to 600k of the easiest to scam rubes on the planet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

What’s so valuable about it?

It's not. And a lot of people in the industry have pointed out that the valuation is pretty wildly decoupled from potential.

The most compelling argument I've heard is that it's a lot of retail -- small -- investors who politically support Trump and have no idea what they're doing buying into a complicated vehicle because Trump's told them that he's gonna make them rich. I remember some article a while back talking about the high proportion of retail investors.

kagis for an example

https://www.ft.com/content/5fdd8a48-ce51-4e3b-b450-49fce86f37d9

Small investors power Trump Media’s market valuation above $13bn

Heavy trading in company behind Truth Social fuels talk of a new cycle of ‘meme stock mania’

Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is riding a wave of enthusiasm from small investors as a second day of gains took the lossmaking social media group’s valuation above $13bn.

Trump Media & Technology Group topped the leaderboard of most-discussed stocks in WallStreetBets, Reddit’s popular stock trading forum, for several hours on Wednesday.

“Hate Trump but I knew his minions wouldn’t be able to help themselves the moment the ticker changed. Would’ve doubled down if I had any additional funds,” said WallStreetBets user FlapjackInProtest, who claimed he had turned $500 into $6,000 by trading TMTG options. Others reporting winning bets drew praise. WallStreetBets user optimal_burrito replied to someone who posted that buying Trump Media was their first winning trade with the message: “You’re gonna start winning so much you’ll get sick of it #DJT.”

Honestly, I think that there's some argument that the SEC should do something about people getting burned like this, though I'm sure that if they did, Trump would go into another one of his spiels on being oppressed.

Like, you may not like Trump supporters, but I remember reading some articles about people putting their life savings into this. I mean, it's not gonna be pretty.

[–] SassyRamen 3 points 2 months ago

Money + laundering of said money = most shit Dump has his name on

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

600k active accounts. Maybe half of them are real Americans.