Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), Crypto.com and SPAC company Yorkville have formally ended a deal that once aimed to build a public CRO treasury company worth about $6.42 billion.
The parties announced the termination on Aug. 7. The decision also halted related plans involving a prediction-market product and ETF custody cooperation that had been unveiled alongside the treasury proposal.
The CRO treasury company never moved past the proposal stage
The biggest part of the arrangement was a plan to create a listed company centered on CRO. Under the structure announced in August 2025, Trump Media was to use Yorkville as a SPAC route to form an entity called Trump Media Group CRO Strategy, described at the time as the first and largest publicly traded CRO treasury company.
The proposed vehicle was set to hold about 6.313 billion CRO, close to one-fifth of CRO’s circulating supply at that time. Its stated size was about $6.42 billion, built from $1 billion in CRO, $200 million in cash, $220 million in warrants and a $5 billion equity credit line.
That plan never became operational. The August 2025 announcement was only a framework agreement, and the public listing path still required U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing and approval procedures. The transaction remained pending for roughly a year before it was canceled outright.
Prediction-market and ETF custody plans were also dropped
Two related pieces of the broader partnership were swept up in the reversal.
One was Truth Predict, a prediction-market product that had been intended for Truth Social and was supposed to let users place bets on political, economic and sports outcomes. That idea has now been cut back to a marketing arrangement under which Crypto.com promotes its own prediction market to Truth Social users.
The other was a plan for Crypto.com to provide custody for Trump Media’s ETF products. That arrangement has also been abandoned.
One separate deal remains intact because it had already been completed. In August 2025, Trump Media bought about $105 million in CRO and put it on its balance sheet, while Crypto.com bought $50 million of DJT shares. Because that transaction had already settled, it was not affected by the latest termination.
Political outreach came before the commercial tie-up
The report said the commercial relationship was preceded by political outreach from Crypto.com toward Trump’s camp.
Around the 2024 U.S. election, Crypto.com donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and provided $10 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek also went to Mar-a-Lago and spoke with Trump in person about crypto policy.
In March 2025, the SEC dropped its investigation into Crypto.com. The report noted that before that step, the agency had issued a warning tied to possible enforcement action.
Against that backdrop, the business deal followed in August 2025. As described in the report, Trump Media wanted a crypto story, tokens that could be placed on its balance sheet, and an ETF custody provider. Crypto.com, for its part, wanted Trump’s name to lend support to CRO.
That overlap drew conflict-of-interest scrutiny from the start. Senator Elizabeth Warren and others publicly called for an investigation into whether political factors had influenced the SEC’s decision, according to the report.
Crypto.com pointed to market conditions
Kris Marszalek addressed the decision in a statement, saying, “After looking at these proposed ETFs and DATs from every angle, we came to the same conclusion — it does not make sense to continue pursuing them in the current market environment.”
He added that Crypto.com would redirect the CRO previously committed to the treasury plan toward other uses aimed at supporting revenue, demand and ecosystem value.
The Block reported that a person close to the transaction said the shift had more to do with changes in the competitive landscape than with discomfort over the awkward optics of a Trump-linked company doing business with an exchange overseen by a Trump administration.
Falling CRO and BTC prices changed the backdrop
As of publication, CRO was trading at about $0.0616, down roughly 70% over the past year, according to the report. It had trended lower since the partnership was announced.
The broader market had also turned. Bitcoin fell from about $126,000 in October 2025 to around $65,000, nearly a 50% drop.
The report said enthusiasm for public digital-asset treasury companies had faded as well. Data from early January 2026 showed that at least 37 of the world’s 100 largest DATs were trading below net asset value. Even Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, was trading at a discount and had begun selling bitcoin to cover preferred-share dividends.
Trump Media has turned toward nuclear fusion
As the crypto angle cooled, Trump Media shifted to a very different sector.
In December 2025, the company announced an all-stock merger with fusion company TAE Technologies at a valuation above $6 billion. Under the terms described in the report, shareholders of each side would own about half of the combined company after the deal closes, which is expected around mid-2026.
TAE Technologies was founded in 1998. The company is set to reach the public market through Trump Media, while the combined business is expected to focus more on clean energy than on social media or crypto.
That leaves the canceled CRO treasury plan looking less like a one-off retreat and more like one step in Trump Media’s broader repositioning away from a Trump-themed crypto story and toward an advanced-energy identity.