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.

Interesting NFTs
Pine Seedlings on the First Rat Day (female diver pleasured by octopuses)
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This collection will be limited to 100 pieces and will never be repeated. Each set will be shared as 10 characters.
The Scion
A young figure caught in a moment of distraction, aware only ephemerally of his unconscious being, as it engages in psychological and psychedelic layer spaces. His right arm casually cradles a moray eel; the figure is comfortable but not truly aware of the potentials for danger in such negligence. His shirt reads “Bello” in Pokemon style font, harkening back to a childhood straddling the millennial threshold. To his right side, out of the unconscious deep, shrouded alien heads propagate as a fractal totem, each new iteration a more sophisticated rendering of emotional masking over the cold mystery of the greys. As the scion of the Budgie-Sattva, the young man, in his distraction, is also simultaneously aware of higher levels of self discovery. To his left a psychological topology sets beneath the oracle side of an 8 ball ,hovering; its message a purest concept of acceptance. The “Scion” lettering is in 80’s HeMan style bold declaration. The lower right side of the painting is like a hybrid of melon, feathers, and seeds. The crystals in the background bring light; conducted, refracted, reflected, and dispersed, to balance the dark shadow of the figure’s physical body. The aura of the scion succeeds in layers to point, with a finger, and the crown chakra, toward a center of a mandala existing as nigh pure application of strokes, in essence painterly abstraction, but also revealing hints of the Aura of migraine, and the bi-hemispherical nature of the brain–noting concerns of the possibility of inherited mental disease. Yet the flourish of chakra as it sets against that center is robust, active, coherent, and reveling against all fear. Fundamentally, the piece speaks to the activation of one’s potential to begin to “Know Thyself”, and find greater awareness out of the enigmas of the mind–as an inculcated seed given to the rich soil of one’s own birthright.
Smile to Shreds, Neon Gwen
The First KayPikeFashion Mint Ever. Ever feel so joyful and were grinning so hard you felt you could split in half? That punk rebel yell of glee when you pull of a particularly refined stunt? This is the paint of dreams, fangs and neon. Hellish and hard to pull off. I was able to with this work quietly paint a sweet inner tale of childhood influences, rat fink and autobody shops. All while pretending to paint gwenom for the audience. More on that in bonus material. This is my alternate animation made specifically for crypto art collectors. It will only ever exist in this format. You get the Shiny, unused in media verified image. More on that in the bonus material. Mixed Media: Bio/Digital. Glycerin on 5'9" human skin 10-14 hours Performance art. Shot on Canon EOS RP. 16 + hours Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve. All Works are SFW. Art has been Seen on the front page of Reddit, Featured in the New York Times, Galileo.tv, and multiple other promotions including Twitch.tv, Disney Interactive, RIOT games, WB games, AMD and more! More on how this art is unique and potentially explosive in the NFT world: https://youtu.be/CXbNF2Y6srs ------------------------- The purchase of this NFT Grants the buyer unique bonus material. Physical Mail Bonus Package: A verified physical Art Print. Autographed from the artist in 12x16. Please allow a few weeks for delivery. Digital Bonus Package: This image in .mp4. An "About the Art" Video and an "From the Artist" introduction. A README.txt about the artwork with some personal notes and Links relevant to the artwork.
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