The former president’s fortune dropped from an estimated $3.2 billion last fall to $2.5 billion today according to Forbes.
The biggest reason? His social media business, once hyped to the moon, has come crashing down, erasing $550 million from his net worth so far.
In October 2021, Donald Trump was eager for revenge. Nine months earlier he had been banned from Twitter, depriving him of his primary means of communicating with his followers. His solution? Build his own Twitter.
Dubbed Truth Social, it had the potential to boost Trump’s fortune by billions. As soon as he announced the plan, supporters piled into Truth Social’s special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Shares of the SPAC, Digital World Acquisition Corp., shot up from $10 to $175 in two days, implying that the business was worth $22 billion, his interest amounting to $19 billion.
The hype never lined up with reality. In December 2021, a group of big-money investors promised to inject $1 billion in cash into the venture—but only if they got a sweetheart deal. By that point, shares were trading for $45 on the open market.
But under the agreement, the new investors would be guaranteed a profit as long as the shares stayed above $10. When previously estimating the value of Trump’s stake, Forbes used that $10-per-share figure and came to $730 million.
Given that Trump owns roughly 85% of the business and Twitter is worth an estimated $42 per user, the former president’s stake probably adds up to about $180 million today. The drop helped push him 205 spots lower on the 2023 World’s Billionaires list, to No. 1,217.
