Donald Trump's NFT Prices Soar As Indictment Looms
Prices for Donald Trump's digital "trading cards" are soaring following calls from the former president to supporters to take to the streets in protest ahead of his likely indictment in New York City this week.
The former president—who is currently facing a Manhattan district attorney probe into whether he illegally paid off two former sexual partners for their silence during the 2016 presidential election—launched the trading cards in the form of "non-fungible tokens" in December. NFTs include any digital art with a unique signature on a blockchain or database. The launch drew criticism and disappointment from a number of his supporters who felt he wasn't taking his burgeoning 2024 campaign seriously enough.
However, all 45,000 of the $99-a-piece trading cards that were released—depicting Trump's face photoshopped into a series of hypermasculine and patriotic scenes—quickly sold out upon their launch, with prices fluctuating up and down at rapid pitch.
In addition to their intrinsic value, the cards were also sold with the possibility of buyers receiving benefits like dinner or even an in-person meet-and-greet with Trump. As of this week, Trump's vendor on the NFT marketplace OpenSea, Trump Deployer, was selling tickets on the platform for buyers to join a group Zoom call with the former president, with prices ranging between $25 and $88.
The trading cards, however, were among Trump's most lucrative products on the digital platform.
On December 17, two days after launching the NFT series, the floor price for the trading cards on OpenSea peaked at 0.82 Ethereum, the equivalent of about $999. The following week, the floor price stood at 0.23 ETH, or around $280, before falling to a price of approximately 0.212 ETH in early January.
Since then, the price of Trump's NFT trading cards has ranged as high as 0.68 ETH—a little over $1,776 dollars—to as low as 0.42 ETH (or $722) earlier this month. Since news of Trump's imminent arrest last week, however, the floor price of Trump's NFTs has spiked more than 32 percent, with OpenSea data showing the total number of sales increasing by double-digit percentages.