Trump Media Delays Registration for Bitcoin ETF

President Donald Trump’s media company filed an updated application for its Truth Social Bitcoin ETF last week, delaying its launch date amid caution toward crypto at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The updated filing, which was initially submitted in June, still does not include details such as a fee or ticker symbol. Some say the fund, which will directly track the price of bitcoin, might struggle to differentiate itself. “Bitcoin is effectively digital gold. [It’s] not really being used for transactions the way you know currencies are,” said Jeff DeMaso, founder of the newsletter The Independent Vanguard Advisor. “How much appetite is there for different flavors of digital gold?”

The Bit(coin) Of Your Own Drum

Trump’s bitcoin ETF is one of three filings from Trump Media, which owns his social media platform Truth Social, the other two being the Truth Social Crypto Blue Chip ETF and the Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF. Josh Barone, wealth manager at Savvy Advisors, said that having both a bitcoin fund and a more diversified crypto index fund taps into two distinct markets: the “ideological retail investor” who wants a Trump-approved product, and the “broader, crypto-curious crowd.” He added that “fixed supply dynamics, increasing institutional adoption, and a maturing ETF market” have lowered bitcoin’s barriers to entry for investors who wouldn’t otherwise get into crypto. Still, DeMaso says the fund is likely to blend into the background compared to other, more established funds. “I would fully expect the iShares, the Fidelitys of the world to kind of continue to take the bulk of the assets,” he said. “The ETF space is really winner-takes-all, and that race has already started.”

The biggest players in the bitcoin ETF space are:

• The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), which has over $88 billion in assets;
• Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), which has $23 billion in assets;
• And Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), which has $21 billion in assets.

Crypto-Curious. At least in the short run, the product will be successful because of Trump’s political base, the fund’s media attention and pro-crypto policy tailwinds, Barone said. Long-term viability, however, will depend on the success of its “initial adoption phase, followed by consistent execution, transparency, and competitive pricing,” he said. “The branding alone will attract a segment of the market that might otherwise avoid crypto entirely.”