Trump’s crypto firms spar with each other over rogue wallet announcement

A splashy website featuring an illustration of Donald Trump, looking buff and pumping his fist in the air, appeared online on Tuesday. The image is the logo of one of Trump’s digital currencies, and the website claims to be the “Official $Trump Wallet”, hawking a product that would allow customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, primarily the president’s own.

The website prominently features the name of Trump’s coin, $Trump, and invites people to join the waitlist to use the digital wallet. It was first noticed by the crypto newsletter Citation Needed. Magic Eden, an established cryptocurrency marketplace, said on the website that it had partnered with Trump’s official digital coin team to create the wallet. The Twitter/X account for one of Trump’s cryptocurrencies promoted the wallet product as well.

“The $TRUMP Wallet powered by @magiceden is coming soon. Join the $TRUMP community! http://TrumpWallet.com,” reads a tweet from @TrumpMeme.

Though the announcements bear the markers of legitimacy and official involvement, Trump’s sons have called foul.

“The Trump Organization has zero involvement with this wallet product,” Donald Trump Jr. quickly posted to the social media site X on Tuesday. Shortly after, Eric Trump posted: “I run @Trump and I know nothing about this project!” Even Barron Trump chimed in saying: “To be clear, our family has zero involvement with this wallet.”

Trump Jr added that he’d been “working tirelessly” on launching an official wallet with another of the family’s crypto businesses, World Liberty Financial, which Trump and his sons created last year.

The cryptocurrency industry is known for frauds, scams and infighting. The latest spat between Magic Eden and World Liberty Financial appears to stem from a conflict between Trump’s sons and Bill Zanker, who is a longtime business partner of Trump. Zanker runs the business that issued $Trump, Fight Fight Fight LLC, which is separate from the Trump Organization and World Liberty. The Trump Organization also owns a firm called CIC Digital, which, along with Fight Fight Fight, oversees and profits from the trade of the cryptocurrency while owning 80% of the coin’s reserves, on paper worth about $2bn.

On X, Magic Eden and Zanker’s company both said the crypto wallet announced on Tuesday was indeed affiliated with Trump and powered by Magic Eden.

Eric Trump maintained this was wrong. Later on Tuesday, he issued a warning on X: “This project is not authorized by @Trump,” he wrote. “@MagicEden I would be extremely careful using our name in a project that has not been approved and is unknown to anyone in our organization.”

Over the past several months, Trump’s family and business partners have debuted a web of crypto business and digital currencies – those include a memecoin with the image of Trump pumping his fist, and a stablecoin that is designed to maintain a constant value of $1. Melania Trump even presented her own memecoin.

In his first term, Trump was adamantly opposed to cryptocurrency, but has since had an about-face. He’s embraced the volatile industry, becoming the first major candidate to accept donations in cryptocurrency, speaking at a major crypto conference on the campaign trail. Trump has hosted industry leaders at the White House, and wined and dined the top holders of his cryptocurrency at his private golf club outside Washington DC. Trump’s administration has also named tech investor David Sacks his “crypto czar”, rolled back regulations on digital assets and halted a series of federal investigations into cryptocurrency firms.

The White House, Magic Eden and Zanker did not return requests for comment.