Two weeks ago, GD Culture Group (GDC), a bitcoin (BTC) treasury stock with ties to Donald Trump’s TRUMP memecoin, published a “going private proposal” of $10.75 per share. Yesterday, the stock traded to a 52-week low below $0.10.
Aside from evaluating that non-binding, going-private proposal roughly 88 times higher than its actual stock price, GDC says it will soon provide “digital human creation and customization for social media influencers.”
US representatives have also accused the China-backed company of funnelling money toward Trump in exchange for delaying his TikTok ban.
It’s all a little confusing.
On the day of the going-private proposal two weeks ago, shares spiked to $8.18 on momentary optimism that the deal was credible. Shares have subsequently crashed 98% as fact-checkers actually looked into the details.
Below is the rise and fall of a strange, China-linked, TikTok- and TRUMP-supporting, BTC treasury stock.
GD Culture Group and TRUMP
Days before Donald Trump’s May 2025 dinner at Mar-a-Lago for the top 220 holders of his TRUMP memecoin, GDC announced a $300 million stock purchase agreement with an unnamed buyer in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
The stated purpose was a “crypto asset treasury strategy, including the purchase of BTC and TRUMP.”
At the time, GDC had essentially no revenue and less than 10 employees and its operations depended on TikTok, a Chinese-founded social media platform.
The generous announcement out of the BVI conveniently coincided with Trump’s decision to delay enforcement actions against TikTok.
The New York Times described GDC as one of the first China-linked companies to publicly acknowledge intentions to buy TRUMP.
Trump-controlled entities CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC together held 80% of the post-ICO token supply of TRUMP. Therefore, any purchase funded by GDC or its BVI buyer would enrich the president directly through supply reduction and trading fees.
Soon after GDC’s dubious announcement, US representatives Adam Smith and Sean Casten led 35 House Democrats in a letter to the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section.
They demanded an investigation into whether GDC’s dinner-for-tokens scheme violated federal bribery laws or the foreign emoluments clause.
The representatives named GDC in their letter, noting its Chinese subsidiary’s disclosed exposure to government intervention, and connected the TikTok-delay timing to the $300 million pledge.
Based on public filings, it’s unclear whether GDC actually ended up purchasing TRUMP tokens, but the company did end up acquiring BTC through a circuitous path.
Specifically, a China-linked consortium sold 7,500 BTC to a GDC affiliate in September 2025. They received newly issued GDC stock in exchange for that disbursement.
Members of that same consortium recently announced their dubious going-private proposal.
GDC’s Q1 2026 quarterly report disclosed less than $50,000 in cash and a working capital deficit of $1.7 million. The 2025 annual report listed a mere five full-time employees.
The company has no substantial operating revenue.
Its only consequential asset is BTC acquired through a transaction that the company itself disclosed as a related-party deal.
Collapse of a TRUMP memecoin and BTC treasury scheme
A Nasdaq-listed penny stock, GDC closed yesterday’s trading session around $0.12, printing a fresh 52-week low yesterday near $0.09 during the day.
Its market capitalization is an embarrassing $7 million. Its 7,500 BTC holdings, if someone can even call them holdings at this point, are worth roughly over half a billion dollars at current prices.
That is a discount of more than 98% or a multiple-to-Net Asset Value (mNAV) of 0.02x.
In other words, a company holding more than half a billion dollars of BTC has a market cap worth less than an average New York City apartment.
Read more: Donald Trump Jr. proclaims he was “at the top of the Ponzi scheme”
GDC issued 39,189,344 new shares in exchange for the 7,500 BTC. The 10-Q records the BTC at a cost basis of $842 million, implying a share value of roughly $21.49 at issuance.
No cash changed hands. The same filing discloses the BTC acquisition as a related-party transaction.
No TRUMP memecoin purchase or holding has ever appeared in the company’s SEC disclosures.
By February 2026, with the stock languishing, the GDC board authorized BTC sales from the 7,500-coin reserve. Management earmarked the proceeds for a $100 million share repurchase program.
The board reserved discretion to sell at any time, in any number of transactions.
This abandoned the corporate BTC reserve doctrine that competitors like Strategy spent years promoting, yet any share buybacks have evidently not helped the stock price, which hit a 52-week low yesterday.
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