Former United States President Donald Trump launched a non-fungible token collection (NFT). The collection was announced not long after Trump teased the big announcement after he returned to run for president for the third time.
In his post on Truth Social, Trump said his collection of "Donald Trump Digital Trading Cards" could be collected like baseball cards and stored digitally. Interestingly, Trump never called this collection an NFT, but a digital trading card.
The collection consists of 45,000 NFTs on the Polygon blockchain which are valued at USD 99 each. Just 12 hours after launch, this NFT collection sold out instantly according to OpenSea data.
At a price of USD 99, this means that Trump gains around USD 4.45 million from the sale of this NFT. If the NFT is resold by the owner on a platform like OpenSea, the NFT creator is also entitled to a 10% commission.
The NFT depicts Trump in a caricature of various poses. There are those who look like astronauts, cowboys, to super heroes like Superman who shoot lasers from their eyes.
NFT owners can also enter the lottery and win several prizes, including a one-on-one meeting with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort to playing golf with Trump, as quoted by Cnet, Friday (16/12/2022).
NFT INT, the company behind the collection, said the money raised from the sale would not go towards Trump's presidential campaign. On its website, NFT INT says they are not owned by Trump or any of his other organizations, and that Trump only licensed his name, image, and face for the project.
Trump's decision to sell NFTs is quite confusing. Previously in 2021 Trump had said crypto as something dangerous.
In addition, in the past year, NFT and crypto trends have begun to weaken following uncertain economic conditions. Last month's NFT trading volume on OpenSea was only USD 250 million, significantly lower than USD 2.5 billion in May 2022.