Allies Explode Crypto Movement After FTX Collapse

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Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios

Former President Trump’s “major announcement” this week, which turned out to be $99 non-fungible tokens (NFTs), made him the butt of ridicule from some of his staunchest supporters.

The big picture: The announcement launched a series of rapid criticisms in the right-wing media landscape with Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn calling on Trump to fire the person behind the decision.

“I can’t watch it again, make it stop,” Bannon said on his podcast. “Anyone in the communications team and anyone at Mar-a-Lago and I love the people there, but they were at war. They should be fired today.” “beyond evil” in the wake of the FTX crash and crypto winter. “Who advised him to do this? he added. “Anyone who advised him on this, I would fire them immediately,” Flynn said during a broadcast on conservative video-hosting platform Rumble. Baked Alaska, a far-right media personality who pleaded guilty to illegally protesting against the Capitol on January 6, 2021, tweeted, “Can’t believe I’m going to jail for an NFT salesman. “

Between the Lines: As garish as you could have imagined a line of Trump’s NFTs might be even after declaring another presidential campaign, these are more garish than that.

The former Commander-in-Chief said “AMERICA NEEDS A SUPERHERO” (all caps).

What’s going on ? On Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had made a “major announcement,” which made the rounds on social media.

It turned out to be a line of NFTs at a time when the market for these digital assets was decimated amid a staggering cryptocurrency rout.

Note: There is no mention of the Trump campaign in any of the documents. The bottom of the NFT website states that Trump’s likeness is used under license: an entity called “NFT INT LLC” owns the copyright to all content.

It says, “NFT INT LLC is not owned, operated or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective directors or affiliates.”

In the Weeds: NFTs can be purchased with dollars or wrapped ether (WETH). They are hosted on the Polygon blockchain, although the website has yet to release the contract address.

There will be 45,000 cards to collect and 44,000 for sale. Shoppers who go directly to the site won’t know which NFT they’re getting after their purchase (or “mint,” in NFT lingo). Twitter’s testimony seems to indicate that the process was quite buggy. Buyers who want to choose can go directly to OpenSea and buy on the secondary market, and 10% of the purchase price will go to the issuer.

Flashback: This offer is kind of a flip-flop, and in Trump’s case, there’s always a (contradictory) pre-tweet.

On July 11, 2019, the then President tweeted: “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is very volatile and based on air.”

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