Trump Media's $409.7M third-quarter net income came from bitcoin and stock gains, while its core operations lost about $23.6M.
Trump Media & Technology Group posted $409.7 million in third-quarter net income, and almost none of it came from running Truth Social. Strip out the bitcoin and securities gains, and the operating business lost roughly $23.6 million in the quarter. That gap is the real story here.
The company's 10-Q filing for the three months ended Sept. 30 shows a $378.1 million gain on digital assets and pledged digital assets. The filing counts that gain inside operating costs, which is why the headline profit looks so different from the business underneath. For comparison, the company lost $54.8 million in the same quarter of 2025.
Most of the Bitcoin Is Working as Collateral
Note 4 of the filing lists 4,263.94 BTC held directly and 11,385.20 BTC pledged as collateral for covered options, meaning options backed by coins the company already owns. Together that's 15,649.14 BTC, worth about $1.31 billion at quarter's end. The options counterparty can rehypothecate the pledged coins, reusing them for its own purposes.
Trump Media says it trades these options "to generate yield on these assets and increase our principal balance of bitcoin." That's a yield strategy, and it's also a bet that the coins keep their value while they sit on someone else's balance sheet.
Nearly all the directly held coins, 4,260.73 BTC, secure the company's $1 billion in convertible notes. Holders can require Trump Media to buy those notes back for cash on Nov. 30, so that date matters more than the quarterly mark-to-market gains suggest. The company bought 6,359.15 BTC in the first nine months of 2026.
The Cronos (CRO) position is smaller but moving the wrong way. The company still holds 756.1 million CRO tokens, the same count it had at the end of 2025, but their value fell to $50.3 million from $68.0 million. Most of them are locked from sale until August 2029.
Where the Rest of the Gain Came From
The results release puts non-cash gains on digital assets, pledged digital assets and equity securities at $496.1 million. The 10-Q breaks out the stock side: $98.3 million in unrealized gains and $19.7 million in realized gains on equity securities, partly offset by a $54.0 million loss on derivatives.
Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure that excludes those gains, came in at a $12.3 million loss. That's narrower than the $29.1 million loss a year earlier, and it's the number that tells you how the core business is actually doing.
Revenue rose 205% to $3.0 million. The filing credits most of the increase to subscriptions for Truth API, a paid feed of Truth Social posts that launched Aug. 1, and to the Truth+ streaming service. Advertising grew too, and the company recorded $164,000 in management fees from its Truth.Fi exchange-traded funds.
Interim CEO Kevin McGurn framed the quarter this way: "We've remained committed to capitalizing on our business fundamentals, and that focus is paying off." The revenue growth supports that claim. The adjusted EBITDA loss, even narrowed, suggests the payoff hasn't arrived yet.
The TAE Merger Moves Forward
The SEC declared Trump Media's merger registration with TAE Technologies effective on Nov. 5. Shareholders will vote on the deal at a special meeting on Dec. 14. Under the merger agreement, TAE would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Media, and the 10-Q says the combined company would develop and commercialize TAE's fusion energy technology. The company expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter.
In October, TAE borrowed the remaining $100 million available under its convertible note from Trump Media. Between the bitcoin collateral, the November note deadline and a fusion merger still awaiting a vote, the company has a lot of moving parts. The December vote will show whether shareholders see the TAE deal as the next growth story or one more reason to look past the operating numbers.
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