If you’ve been hoping that President Donald Trump’s associates would continue to expand their private cryptocurrency empire while his administration weakens protections against crypto scams, it may be your lucky day. The world is seemingly set to be blessed with a Trump-branded crypto wallet, which will be called the “Official $TRUMP Wallet,” just like the grifty $TRUMP memecoin.
Or maybe not—or at least not yet. It’s complicated. Consider this Schrödinger's Wallet or, if you prefer, $chrödinger's Wallet.
A crypto wallet is typically an app or a physical device, like a thumb drive, where you store the keys—aka passwords—for your crypto holdings. Some wallets allow users to trade cryptocurrency, and it appears from the mockup on TrumpWallet.com that the $TRUMP Wallet would include trading.
After software engineer Molly White broke the news of “$TRUMP Wallet” in her Citation Needed newsletter on Tuesday, two of Trump’s large adult sons—Eric and Don Jr.—said the Trump Organization has nothing to do with it, and told The New York Times that they would pursue legal action.
President Donald Trump, driven by his son Eric Trump, arrives at Trump National Doral on April 3 in Miami.
On top of that, writing on X, Don Jr. said that World Liberty Financial—which has deep ties to the Trumps— “will be launching our official wallet soon.”
That sounds a lot like White got out over her skis, and it’s possible she did, but the Trump companies have lied about past crypto deals. For instance, when news first broke that Trump Media and Technology Group—originally the parent company of Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform—had made a deal to buy billions in crypto, the company called it “fake news,” then announced the deal the next day.
Right now, it appears that the $TRUMP Wallet is being launched partly by Magic Eden, a marketplace for people to buy and sell NFTs. Remember those? Trump pushed out those hilarious “digital trading cards” depicting him as a cowboy or in space or hunting or dressed as a superhero. And they collapsed in value with all other NFTs when people realized that spending comically large amounts of money on what is little more than a JPEG you can see only on the internet was not a solid investment? Anyway, you can still find them for sale at Magic Eden.
Magic Eden CEO Jack Tan Lu reportedly attended the Trump—sorry, $TRUMP—memecoin dinner in May. That’s the one where attendees purchased anywhere from $55,000 to $37.7 million worth of private company owner Trump’s memecoin so they could get close to the president in his public role. No word on just how much Lu dropped, and no one knows at the moment whether Lu’s spending resulted in a crypto partnership with the Trump family.
So, are Don Jr. and Eric lying just so they can announce the $TRUMP Wallet deal when they want to, or is this supposedly official $TRUMP Wallet a scam by some people in Trump’s orbit who hope to capitalize on Trump’s name? Who can say! Cryptocurrency is so lightly regulated and the Trump family has so many shady crypto ventures that untangling this is impossible.
On Tuesday, what appears to have happened is that after White first published her story, Magic Eden pushed out an announcement launching the “Official $TRUMP Wallet” and saying it was created in partnership with Bill Zanker, the architect of the actually-official $TRUMP memecoin. Zanker and Trump go way back, with them co-authoring a book in 2007. Zanker and a company he runs called Fight, Fight, Fight organized May’s memecoin dinner with Trump. So it isn’t like Zanker is some nobody trading on Trump’s name.
But either Magic Eden’s announcement or White’s story or both is what sparked the denials from Don Jr. and Eric.
White’s conclusion in her updated story is most likely the correct one, which is that talks between Magic Eden, Zanker and/or Fight Fight Fight, and the Trump family crypto companies broke down somewhere along the line. That leaves the rest of us to try to figure out what involvement, if any, the president of the United States has with this latest crypto venture.
Of course, this is a thing we should not have to figure out. Trump should not have a bunch of private businesses, many of them very sketchy, that profit from his role as president.
A bitcoin token, shown on May 11.
In general, Trump’s crypto shadiness relies upon him and his team being certain that the Securities and Exchange Commission will not interfere in the dealings. And it turns out that Trump is in luck, what with him running the government and all.
Back in February, the SEC said most memecoins were not securities, meaning that they aren’t considered investments and that buyers should have no reasonable expectation the promoters of the coins will undertake efforts to create profits for them. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce made this crystal clear, telling CNBC in late May, “[I]t’s good for people to know, I should not be looking to the SEC for protection in this area.”
There’s no reason Peirce needed to make a statement, given that Trump’s stance is that the SEC has no power as an independent regulator but is instead under his authority. His administration has also paved the way for more Trump crypto corruption by disbanding the Department of Justice’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.
Trump’s private fortunes are now impossibly tangled with government policies. His fortunes will likely increase if he keeps wiping out regulations against crypto that might hobble his abilities to hoover up cash. It’s breathtakingly, transparently corrupt, and we live here now.
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