21/12/2022 Crypto Twitter Delves Into Strange, Sloppy Side of Trump’s NFT Collection

Online sleuths analyzed blockchain data and assets in the former president’s NFT collection, finding evidence of stolen art and shady wallet addresses, painting a picture of how the digital collectibles came to be.

Trump Trading Card NFTs (OpenSea)

Trump Trading Card NFTs (OpenSea)

This weekend’s episode of "Saturday Night Live" began with a skit poking fun at former President Donald Trump’srecently released, meme-worthy non-fungible token (NFT) collection.

“Seems like a scam and, in many ways, it is,” said James Austin Johnson, who played the 45th president in the show’s cold open.

While the mainstream media has eagerlypicked up the story on the collectionfor its comedic value, the popularity of the Trump Digital Trading Cards has continued to climb since the collection dropped on Thursday,selling out within 24 hours.

According todata from OpenSea, the collection’s trading volume is 6,658 ether (ETH), or about $7.8 million at the time of publishing. Its floor price, which started at $99, has been hovering around 0.3 ETH, or $350.

The collection features 45,000 tokens in the style of baseball cards. In each collectible, Trump wears a different costume linked to rarity elements that allow users to enter a sweepstakes to win prizes like a zoom call with the former president or a cocktail hour at Mar-a-Lago.

In the wake of the project’s apparent success, internet sleuths have dug deep into the project and the parties behind the wallet addresses associated with Trump’s collectibles. Among the nuances and inconsistencies alleged on Twitter: the company that created the collectibles is hoarding a large amount of them; that the project poorly relies on stock imagery; and that most of the buyers opened new wallets without holding any cryptocurrency, sticking them with an NFT and no way to derive any future value from them.

The strange case of 1,000 NFTs

Over the weekend, Twitter user @NFTherder noticed something strange about a large number of the rarest NFTs in the collection. The user posted a thread explaining the nature of the transaction data of the contracts involved in the mint.

According to data fromPolyscan, Polygon’s version of Etherscan, a “Donald Trump Admin” wallet minted 1,000 tokens to aGnosis Safe Wallet, a multisignature smart contract wallet that requires a handful of users associated with the tokens to approve of any asset movement.

While theCollect Trump Cardssite said that 44,000 of the 45,000 tokens created in the initial series would be available for users to mint, it did not specify what would happen to the remaining 1,000 tokens. Where another project might save those assets for a later date to revive demand, data suggests that the administrative wallet holds the remaining minted 1,000 tokens.

1/ Turns out Donald Trump minted a thousand of his own nfts to his vault wallet

Keeping a giant portion of the most rare nfts in his collection for himself

The 2nd minted nft was a rare 1-of-1, the chances ...pic.twitter.com/3m0MQGQydp

— OKHotshot (@NFTherder)December 17, 2022

After thecollapse of Three Arrows Capital, the crypto-hedge fund backedNFT collection “Starry Night”moved its tokens into a Gnosis Safe wallet, along with other valuable assets. It was likely done out of caution to hold the assets in one place to prevent any singular actor from moving these out of the wallet.

The Trump Trading Card site specified that there was a “strict limit of 100 Trump Digital Trading Cards per purchaser/household,” meaning that an individual or a group who did not have to abide by the rules for the general public was able to pick up a large swath of the NFT pool.

In addition, the mystery wallet isn’t full of second-rate NFTs. It minted 26% of the rarest 1-of-1 tokens and 28% of the autographed trading cards, according to NFTherder. These are the most valuable and expensive assets in the collection, respectively comprising 0.4% and 0.16% of the total tokens in the collection.

NFTherder told CoinDesk that not only do the wallet owners have the ability to inflate the price floor of the collection, but they also could have the ability to rig the sweepstakes and alter the competition.

“If this was a 10,000 unit collection about monkeys, the whole discord would be blowing up about how this is a rug and a scam and that the team is holding one fourth of the most rare supply,” said NFTHerder.

The curious marks and maker of the art

While people have been digging into the wallet addresses and collection sweepstakes, other Twitter users were delving into pop culture digital artist Clark Mitchell and the artwork he created for the collection.

On-Chain TV founder Morgan Sarkissian tweeted an image of one of the collectibles featuring the 45th president in a space suit that seemed to still have a visible watermark from Shutterstock.

Someone found one of the NFTs still had a watermark from shutterstock on one of the Trump NFTspic.twitter.com/wmvAPhaRP2

— Morgan (@Helloimmorgan)December 17, 2022

She also uncovered an Adobe watermark in another token listed in the collection.

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