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Have you heard of GD Culture Group? Most likely not, since the Chinese e-commerce firm focusing on TikTok has just eight employees and earned zero revenue last year. Still, though, it found the capital to make as much as a $300 million investment in $TRUMP — the meme cryptocurrency launched by Donald Trump that has no inherent value, except maybe buying access to the president.
In a securities filing made public late on Tuesday, and first reported by the New York Times, GD Culture Group announced it had purchased $300 million of bitcoin and the $TRUMP coin. Despite a staff too small to play a game of baseball, the firm made the purchase with money from a stock sale to an undisclosed interest in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven designed to make opaque deals such as this.
It’s unclear how much of the purchase was bitcoin and how much was the president’s meme coin. But it was the first instance of a company with connections to the Chinese government buying Trump’s cryptocurrency. In a previous financial disclosure, GD Culture Group stated that the Chinese government may “intervene or influence” the operations of one of its subsidiaries “at any time.”
Already, Trump’s cryptocurrencies have proven to be an excellent way for foreign interests to gain favor with the president, whether that is an Emirati-backed fund investing $2 billion into Trump’s USD1 coin as part of a deal, or a Mexican company buying $20 million of the meme coin to lobby its interests. The timing of the GD Culture purchase is also worth noting, and not just because Trump is retreating from a trade war with the government that can control the company’s operations. For the past month, Trump has been boosting his meme coin with a contest: Whoever buys the most $TRUMP wins a private dinner with him and other top contestants on May 22. The sweepstakes — which some Democrats are calling a brazen act of corruption — netted Trump-owned businesses a reported $320 million in fees in about a month. But as soon as it ended, investors started selling the coin, leading to a sharp drop-off in value.
It’s possible that GD Culture Group bought $299 million worth of bitcoin and just $1 million of $TRUMP, which wouldn’t be a bad idea considering that bitcoin is seeing a quiet resurgence to all-time highs amid economic anxiety caused by Trump’s trade war. But even if most of its investment went to BTC, Trump’s businesses would receive a nice trading fee and proof of concept for a very important idea: The $TRUMP coin is still a great way for foreign millionaires to buy the president’s attention.
