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- Donald Trump collection has enjoyed a highly successful launch
- Problems with the NFTs are many, however, with suspicious activity behind the scenes
- The collection sums up a lot of the bubble-driven noise that has collapsed I the space this year
There is nothing worse than when an otherwise-riveting movie wraps up via an underwhelming ending. You leave the cinema feeling cheated, a sour taste lingering in your mouth.
As far as cryptocurrency goes, the year 2022 looks like it is getting the perfect ending. This has not been a happy movie, it should be said. Markets have cratered this year, scandals have been aplenty and the phrase “Chapter 11” has become uncomfortably commonplace.
And now we are closing it off with a Donald Trump NFT collection catching mainstream media attention. The collection has surpassed 7,000 ETH in volume – that is a cool $8.5 million at time of writing. Floor price for the collection started below $100 but is now close to $400.
What are Donald Trump’s NFTs?
Trump’s collection dropped this month, 45,000 collectibles which look like sports trading cards. They feature the former President in all kinds of variant stances, such as standing in front of Mout Rushmore with Trump’s face added on, or holding a rifle in military gear with a dog by his side .
But the apparent success of the project has led many to dig further into the project, with some funny results popping up. Twitter user @NFTherder noticed that a suspicious amount of the rarest NFTs in the collection were hoarded by a creator wallet.
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
This “Donald Trump Admin” wallet holds 1,000 NFTs in the collection, despite a “strict limit of 100 Trump Digital Trading Cards per purchaser/household”. So not only are they breaking their own rule, but they have claimed some of the most expensive and coveted cards in the collection. The 1000 NFTs are also being held I the wallet that is receiving the royalties from secondary sales of NFTs o the market.
It gets a little more tragic, but far more amusing. People quickly realised that there were watermarks left on several of the images, betraying a lazy reliance on stock imagery. At first glance, the below NFT, #29355, seems like any other.
But if you look closely next to Trump’s left ear, an “Adobe” watermark is clearly visible. That’s good stuff.
It was far from the only one, too.
Someone found one of the NFTs still had a watermark from shutterstock on one of the Trump NFTs pic.twitter.com/wmvAPhaRP2
— Morgan (@Helloimmorgan) December 17, 2022
There are other irregularities here, too. But I think I’ve made my point.
In a year that has seen NFT volume crater by over 90%, the entire industry has taken a massive step back after its explosive arrival on the scene during the pandemic. The Bored Ape Yacht Club (which I have written about before) has seen its floor price fall down to below $100,000 – seen as the flagship collection by most, it signals the trouble in the wider space.
Space cleans out the noise
In a way, the Trump drop is a nostalgic throwback to the crypto bubble, when speculative gambles like this were everywhere you looked. But really, this is a reminder that so much in the space remains nothing but noise, a lurch for quick money by opportunistic creators.
It’s been a torrid year for risk assets overall, but crypto has been ravaged like nowhere else. On the flipside, it is also the industry that saw the most amount of bubble behaviour, with 1000X screenshots all over Twitter, NFTs exchanging hands for hundreds of thousands of dollars and a complete lack of risk management across the board.
Closing the year out with this Trump NFT collection may not rival Lionel Messi’s spectacular World Cup swansong, but in a way, it is exactly what 2022 deserves.
