On December 16, 2022, Donald Trump surprised everyone with the launch of his NFT collection. News of the launch came at a time when NFTs were struggling and the overall digital asset market was reeling from a never-ending crypto winter. It was also a bit unexpected given Trump’s anti-crypto stance.
However, none of that stopped Trump from dropping his 45,000-strong collection of Digital Trading Cards. Launched on the Polygon network, the NFTs depict defining moments in Trump’s life and offer some lucky owners a chance to meet the former POTUS. Each NFT was priced at $99 and the collection sold out within 12 hours, raising nearly $5 million in the process.
On December 17, the project’s floor price on OpenSea, the world's largest NFT marketplace, experienced more than 10X gains, touching 0.84 ETH or $1,182. This rapid success led many to believe that there was genuine interest in the project and that it could skyrocket further. However, this was not the case, as the collection has tanked since then and newer releases from the collection have failed to make any real impression on the market.
Just two days after the project’s release and its initial success, the collection crashed by more than 50 percent. In fact, its floor price tumbled to 0.3 ETH by December 18. This dip may be attributed to crypto sleuths uncovering several discrepancies with the project. For instance, several users reported that the NFT creators used stock images and unlicensed visuals to create the collection.
“Someone found one of the NFTs still had a watermark from Shutterstock on one of the Trump NFTs,” tweeted Morgan Sarkissian, founder and host of OnChainTV.io. A few minutes later, she tweeted another image from the Donald Trump collection, and this one had an Adobe watermark. This is in stark contrast to the collection’s website which states all artworks are hand-drawn.
A day before this, an analyst discovered that an admin wallet linked to the project had minted 1,000 NFTs for itself. The wallet in question was a Gnosis Safe Wallet, which is a multi-signature, smart contract wallet that requires several users associated with the tokens to approve of any asset movement.
This raised alarm bells as the project’s website states that no investor can purchase more than 100 NFTs from the collection. However, despite this upper limit, a wallet linked to the project had minted some of the rarest NFT collections for itself, including several 1-of-1 pieces and nearly a third of all the autographed NFTs.
“Turns out Donald Trump minted a thousand of his own NFTs to his vault wallet. Keeping a giant portion of the rarest NFTs in his collection for himself,” tweeted on-chain analyst, OKHotshot. According to OKHotshot, the wallet “minted 47 of the 179 1/1 and 21 of the 70 autographed NFTs.”
These updates caused the value of the Donal Trump NFT collection to the tank. By December 30, 2022, the collection’s 24-hour sales figure nosedived to less than $60,000. This is a far cry from the project’s initial 24-hour sales figure of $3.5 million. These sales figures have further plummeted in recent times, touching $43,071 in the last 24 hours, down nearly 40 percent from the previous day. The project’s daily transaction count, along with its buyers and sellers have also dropped by 37 percent, 17 percent and 30 percent respectively.
Moreover, users are giving up the perks associated with the NFTs for next to nothing. For instance, several of the NFTs came with a chance to attend a twenty-minute Zoom call with Donald Trump. Users who purchased these NFTs were airdropped exclusive access cards to the Zoom call with Trump. However, several of these users are looking to get rid of their access cards, with some selling for less than $25.
Conclusion
Former US President, Donald Trump, is known for grabbing headlines and staying in the limelight. Unfortunately, while his gamble with NFTs did show promise initially, it has gone completely off the rail since then. As such, the prospects of the collection seem grim and a comeback seems highly unlikely.
