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GD Culture Group, a small technology company with ties to China, announced its plans to buy as much as $300 million of $TRUMP — President Donald Trump’s memecoin.
The firm, which employs eight people, produces short videos for the Chinese-owned social media app, TikTok. While the company recorded no revenue last year, it announced this week that a mysterious stock sale would allow it to invest in Trump’s memecoin, The New York Times reported.
Trump, who has recently planned two lavish cryptocurrency-focused dinners — one of which cost a whopping $1.5 million to attend— has raised the alarm of ethicists who caution that his endeavors with his memecoin and crypto company, World Liberty Financial, could pose a conflict of interest.
GD Culture Group, which is traded on the Nasdaq, said that it would spend $300 million on a stockpile of Bitcoin and $TRUMP. It would be paid for using funds from a mysterious stock sale to an unnamed entity in the British Virgin Islands, a popular tax haven.
The purchase would directly fill the pockets of Trump’s family, as around 80 percent of the memecoin supply is controlled by the Trump Organization and its affiliates.
Trump, who has pushed to integrate crypto more with the U.S. since taking office in January, will “likely profit from the very policies he is pursuing,” State Democracy Defenders Action, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting election sabotage and autocracy, said in a recent report.
“The regulation of digital assets is in its nascency, but rather than divest his crypto assets to avoid any possible conflict of interest, President Trump seems to have positioned himself to maximize profiting from them by adopting a less aggressive regulatory and enforcement program than his predecessor,” the group wrote.
The morally questionable purchase also comes at a time when Trump is trying to reach a deal that would allow TikTok to continue operating in the country.
GD Culture Group, for its part, said it hoped the purchase would “enhance its balance sheet with high-performance, scalable digital assets,” according to a press release from the company.
Any purchase by the group, however, would be the first known instance of a China-linked firm buying Trump’s memecoin, per the Times report.
“The Chinese government may intervene or influence its operations at any time,” the company said in an annual report filed in March.
It was not immediately clear how the company secured the funding to buy the crypto, or what entity in the British Virgin Islands agreed to purchase its stock. In a SEC filing Tuesday, GD Culture Group confirmed its plans to buy $TRUMP, but did not provide any additional information about how the purchase was being financed.
GD Culture Group did not immediately return The Independent’s request for comment.
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