A U.S. Office of Government Ethics report reveals that Donald Trump has generated an income between $500,000 and $1 million via the sales of Trump-branded non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Quick Takes:
- Despite facing controversies and accusations of wash trading, Donald Trump ‘s NFT art project has generated revenue between $500K – $1M from sales.
- The U.S. Office of Government Ethics report states that wallet holders of Trump NFTs are declining. However, trade profits for holders are significantly increasing.
- Trump’s personal earnings from NFT sales still need to be clarified, as NFT INC LLC handles the designing and minting aspects of the project. There are also ties to Bill Zanker’s crypto wallet, who has past relationships with the former president and other celebrity NFT projects.
Recent Data Behind Donald Trump NFTs
Despite Donald Trump’s NFT collection facing controversies over the former president using copyrighted images for the art form and the Trump organization facing accusations of wash trading, the digital assets recently soared in price following Donald Trump’s recent indictment.
Consequently, a recent report by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics states that Trump’s digital trading cards earned between $500k and $1m via the selling of his digital trading cards.
However, although the digital assets have given Trump a nice chunk of change, according to on-chain data from NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam, the number of active crypto wallets holding Donald Trump NFTs declined 14% to 207 over the past week.
Although, during this time, trade profits for the crypto enthusiasts were up by 651% to $12,000.
Out of the 285 total transactions recorded in the given period, 114 traders were profitable, according to the report. Since the project’s launch, the trading profit for the digital works currently stands at $9,040.
Moreover, the NFTs reaped a sales volume of $212,000 in the past week. Throughout the past 90 days, $8.7 million worth of Donald Trump NFTs were exchanged, while $19 million have been traded since the initial launch.
A Dive into Trump’s Personal NFT Earnings
According to the NFT marketplace OpenSea, all sales of Donald Trump NFTs included a 10% creator royalty — much higher than the typical 5% average most NFT artists have on OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces.
With $19 million in sales since the digital project’s debut, the Trump organization behind the digital trading cards earned $1.425 million via NFT transactions once erasing OpenSea’s 2.5% fee. Furthermore, this amount has the potential to grow in a bull market as crypto-based royalty sales increase following market demand.
Nevertheless, the ownership of Trump NFTs, therefore the amount Donald Trump personally profits, needs to be clarified. The reason for this is that the president and his campaign team are not directly involved with designing or minting the digital NFT project. Instead, the firm NFT INC LLC takes over these areas, whos has a registered address at a UPS Store in Park City, Utah. However, the LLC is incorporated in Wyoming.
The domain for Trump NFTs also points to the same crypto wallet address as Bill Zanker. The USA businessman has involvement with other celebrity NFT projects. Interestingly, he has also co-authored books and shown interest in the former president in the past.
As the NFT space evolves — despite being extremely volatile — it will be interesting to observe the future and value of Trump’s NFTs and digital art. Furthermore, the impact each trading card NFT has on Trump’s personal pay (or not?).