Trump Media (DJT) Pledges 73% of Its Bitcoin to an Options Program as $1 Billion Note Deadline Nears

Bitcoin Magazine

Trump Media (DJT) Pledges 73% of Its Bitcoin to an Options Program as $1 Billion Note Deadline Nears

Trump Media & Technology Group has pledged about 73% of its bitcoin to an options program in which the counterparty can reuse the coins, the company disclosed in its third-quarter 10-Q filed Monday, three weeks before holders of its $1 billion in convertible notes can demand cash.

The Truth Social parent held approximately 15,649 BTC on Sept. 30, Chief Financial Officer Phillip Juhan said on Monday’s earnings call, along with 7 million shares of BlackRock’s IBIT. Of those coins, 11,385.20 were pledged to what the company calls its bitcoin yield management program.

The filing says that program requires Trump Media to post bitcoin as collateral “that the counterparty can rehypothecate at their sole discretion.” The pledged coins carried a fair value of $951.4 million at quarter-end. The 10-Q does not name the counterparty.

Another 4,260.73 BTC, worth $356.1 million on Sept. 30, sits as collateral for the convertible notes and cannot be withdrawn or distributed until the indenture’s conditions are met.

Together, the two buckets account for about 15,646 BTC, nearly all of the stack Juhan described.

How the Trump Media options program works

Trump Media sells and buys covered calls and puts on bitcoin, settled in bitcoin, to “generate yield on these assets and increase our principal balance of bitcoin,” the filing says. Premiums arrive in bitcoin and are “immediately rehypothecated to our digital asset manager to reinvest.”

At quarter-end it had written calls referencing 4,838.40 BTC at strikes from $68,000 to $92,000 and puts on 1,500 BTC at $75,000 to $80,000, all expiring in October.

A risk factor spells out the trade-off. The company says its yield counterparties “may not be rated” by credit agencies, that it is limited in its ability to sell or use deployed bitcoin while the arrangements are open, and that where they are unsecured “we may be unable to recover deployed bitcoin in a counterparty insolvency.”

Juhan said Trump Media bought 4,359 bitcoin during the quarter with proceeds from a partial sale of its IBIT position, part of a shift toward “third-party institutional” management of its treasury.