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 multi-billion 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 (CFTC), a US regulatory body, which alleged the firm operated an unregistered derivatives trading market.
In November 2024, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan’s home was raided by the FBI as part of an investigation by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) 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.