In the early hours of today, MagicEden announced a collaboration with $Trump to launch the Trump Wallet. Following the news, the market capitalization of MagicEden's token $ME surged nearly 30% from $850 million to $1.1 billion within two hours. However, shortly after, Trump's sons Eric Trump and DonaldJTrumpJr, along with Barron Trump, who had not previously tweeted on X, all posted statements denying any connection to the announcement.
Eric even tweeted twice, warning the MagicEden team, "MagicEden, I will be very cautious about using our name in projects that are unauthorized and unknown to anyone in our organization." Following the "debunking" by Trump's sons, the market cap of $ME dropped to $960 million and is currently hovering around $1 billion.
Official announcement followed by immediate denial: What is going on with the "Trump Wallet"?
The news first broke at 12:10 AM (UTC+8) today by software engineer and crypto researcher Molly White on X, who revealed that "Trump will launch a branded crypto wallet and trading app." She discovered domain names and website information related to TrumpWallet.com and noted that the site had gone live before the official announcement, offering a sign-up for a wallet waitlist and promotional information for $TRUMP token rewards. Bitcoin Magazine also reported on the incident.
An hour later, at 1:35 AM, MagicEden officially announced a collaboration with $TRUMP to build the @TrumpWalletApp wallet. After announcing this on their main account, many team members retweeted it. MagicEden co-founder and CEO Jack tweeted, "Sign up for our waitlist now! After the app launches, there will be $1 million in $TRUMP rewards. Users who refer at least one person will have a chance to win a $100,000 grand prize." As the "invitation event" began, the invitation code for TrumpWalletApp quickly spread throughout the community.
Another hour later, at 2:21 AM, Eric Trump tweeted, "I run the Trump Organization, but I have no knowledge of this project," tagging WLFI and his holdings in AmericanBTC and the "protagonist" of this incident, $Trump. Subsequently, family members including DonaldJTrumpJr and Barron Trump, along with several WLFI team members, reposted and opposed "this behavior."
Despite the resistance from various "WLFI members," the official TrumpMeme account and MagicEden team members confirmed the collaboration, leaving both sides in a perplexing situation. Currently, the original X account for Trump Wallet has been banned by Twitter. Before this, the account belonged to MagicEden's gold standard account, and according to the official website, the privacy policy and terms and conditions or "promotions" are managed by Slingshot Finance, which was acquired by MagicEden two months ago.
The two major "factions" of the Trump crypto group
This is not the first time the Trump team has shown instability. During his previous presidential term, there were significant power struggles and changes among different factions within the Trump administration, with resignations being commonplace. In this current term, as the cryptocurrency sector has become a focal point of Trump's administration, the teams with vested interests have become even more fragmented, with everyone wanting to "get a piece of the pie."
Meme coin issuers, Trump's long-time business partners
Interestingly, from MagicEden CEO Jack's tweets, it can be seen that he recently attended a dinner with the founder of Slingshot, which was mentioned earlier as being acquired, and this tweet was also retweeted by the official $Trump meme account. On June 3, the TRUMP Meme official account announced that users participating in the "dinner with Trump" event would receive airdrops of three different Solana NFTs to their wallets, which now seems to be a form of preheating for the "Trump Wallet App."
From left to right, Slingshot founder Clinton Bembry Jr., MagicEden founder Jack, MagicEden Chief Business Officer Chris Akhavan
The person planning the $Trump dinner in Washington in May 2025 is Bill Zanker, a long-time friend of President Trump. Bill Zanker is the authorized person behind Fight Fight Fight LLC, the company promoting the $Trump token, which jointly owns 80% of the $TRUMP meme coin's token share with CIC Digital LLC, valued at billions of dollars.
Bill Zanker with Trump
CIC Digital LLC was established in 2021 by one of Trump's lawyers, John Marion, and former advisor Nick Luna. CIC Digital LLC operates the website for the $TRUMP token in collaboration with Fight Fight Fight LLC and generates revenue from transactions.
CIC Digital LLC is responsible for licensing Trump's name and likeness for NFT projects such as Trump Digital Trading Cards. Bill Zanker is considered a key driver of Trump's NFT projects. Reports indicate that Bill Zanker proposed launching an NFT series to Trump in 2022 and met with him at his Mar-a-Lago club to discuss the project's feasibility. CIC Digital LLC licensed Trump's brand to NFT INT LLC (a company registered in Delaware), with Zanker playing a role in organizing and promoting the project, even though he does not directly own NFT INT LLC.
This is not their first collaboration; Magic Eden, as a well-known NFT platform, has previously worked with the Trump Digital Trading Cards project. In March 2024, the Trump card NFT project announced it would migrate to Magic Eden, stating that Magic Eden "has established a dedicated team to assist users in managing their Trump digital card collections."
This is not the first time the two have collaborated. Since they met around 2000, they have worked together multiple times. Initially, Bill Zanker founded The Learning Annex education company, hoping to make it "the McDonald's of the education industry." The company was established by Zanker in 1980 in a studio apartment in New York with $5,000 and grew rapidly, with revenues exceeding $100 million at one point. Celebrities providing advice in the courses included motivational speaker Tony Robbins, former boxer George Foreman, and Trump, who gave a speech titled "Think Big: Nothing is Impossible!" for Learning Annex in 2002. Zanker claimed he paid Trump $1.5 million each time he appeared, but Trump later admitted it was actually only $400,000.
In 2007, the two collaborated to write "Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life." Additionally, they co-founded the ill-fated crowdfunding website FundAnything in 2013, which Zanker started with his own $1 million. However, a year later, Trump distanced himself from the project, only tweeting a few times and stating, "Raising this money took too much of my time and energy," after which the project "fizzled out." It wasn't until 2022 that Bill Zanker proposed the business concept of "trump NFT," leading to their ongoing collaboration in the cryptocurrency space.
Bill Zanker and Trump promoting their co-authored book "Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life"
The statement on the official $Trump website indicates that "TRUMP" is a registered trademark of DTTM Operations LLC. This product is not distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization, or any of their respective affiliates or officers. DTTM Operations LLC is a limited liability company registered in New York, established in 2015, and active in various fields including real estate, hospitality, entertainment, clothing, and political services, holding a significant number of trademarks related to the Trump brand, with records showing at least 137 trademarks.
DTTM Operations LLC also holds the trademark for "THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION," and the copyright for $Trump is not provided by THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION, led by Eric Trump, but rather obtained from DTTM Operations LLC.
Although Trump claimed during his presidency that he handed over daily operations to his children (such as Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump), DTTM Operations LLC is still widely viewed as the entity that protects and manages Trump-related assets.
In addition to Bill Zanker, the community believes that the leader of $Trump also involves David Sacks, the chairman of the Crypto Council. David Sacks is known as one of the founders of PayPal and gained fame by creating Yammer and selling it to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. In the crypto space, David Sacks is primarily recognized as an investor in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin and a staunch supporter of Solana.
"One of the dumbest attacks against me this year is that I sold SOL tokens to retail investors. If that were true, they should have made a fortune by now; congratulations to everyone holding SOL," Sacks stated, emphasizing that he never sold SOL even during the FTX crisis.
Since $Trump is deployed on the Solana chain, and David Sacks has remained silent about these "zero-sum meme coins" since the launch of $TRUMP, many believe that this chairman of the Crypto Council and member of the PayPal Mafia is likely involved.
Further reading: "Silicon Valley Turns Right: Peter Thiel, A16Z, and the Political Ambitions of Cryptocurrency"
In the days following the launch of $Trump, a token named $MELANIA, after Trump's wife Melania, was also issued. Ryan Selkis, founder of Messari, tweeted urging Trump to fire those involved in promoting the $MELANIA project. "The project team lacks professional competence, which could lead to significant financial losses and damage to reputation, and the project decisions did not adequately consider Trump's interests," Selkis pointed out the issues with $MELANIA.
Compared to the $TRUMP token, the issuance of $MELANIA was more hasty, with incomplete front-end code, uncompressed images, and the website only being built a day before the project launch. The legal texts were also not rigorous, leading many netizens to speculate that there are many differences in the methods of $MELANIA and $TRUMP, suggesting they may not be operated by the same team.
More than one community member has revealed, "If my sources are correct, $TRUMP is driven by crypto czar David Sacks, while $MELANIA is done by the Worldliberty team. But it can be confirmed that these two coins are not from the same team."
WLFI "Interest Group," Middle East Envoy Father-Son Team
History often repeats itself, similar to the previous situation where $Trump and $MELANIA "collided." After the collaboration between MagicEden and $Trump for the crypto wallet, Trump's eldest son announced that WLFI would launch its own official wallet. However, applications like the "Trump Wallet" are not like Memecoins; there can only be one Trump-themed wallet app, which led to today's "true and false Monkey King" incident.
Eric Trump sent a series of texts to The New York Times, further escalating the dispute, stating that the Trump family would challenge the "TRUMP Wallet" legally, despite the wallet being promoted on social media by an account associated with Bill Zanker, who is also part of the "Trump interest group." "This product has not reached any agreement," Eric Trump wrote, "This product has not reached any agreement. It has not been approved."
WLFI was established on September 16, 2024, when then-elected President Donald Trump announced his entry into X. The company was founded by real estate mogul Steve Witkoff and his son Zach Witkoff, with Trump's sons Eric Trump and DonaldJTrumpJr also participating as team members.
Justin Sun (left), Zach Witkoff (middle), and Trump's second son Eric Trump (right) attending the cryptocurrency conference Token2049 in Dubai
Witkoff's son, Zach Witkoff, co-founder of the crypto company World Liberty Financial, announced at a conference in Dubai that the company had reached an agreement with Tahnoon’s enterprise to purchase $2 billion worth of stablecoins USD1 issued by World Liberty. The Witkoff father-son duo and the Trump family are expected to share tens of millions of dollars in annual profits, as "the Trump family holds 60% of World Liberty Financial."
Since last fall, the Trump family has begun multiple different cryptocurrency projects, including American Bitcoin, $TRUMP, $MELANIA, World Liberty Financial, and Trump Media & Technology Group. Recently, the Trump family's crypto business has not slowed down; in addition to today's farcical "wallet" incident, Trump's social platform Truth Social submitted a Bitcoin ETF application, and the official meme coin $MELANIA has also reached a liquidity provision agreement with Wintermute. WLFI also airdropped 47 USD1 stablecoins to its token subscribers, seemingly putting the stablecoin track on the right track.
At this point, the team behind $Trump and Trump NFT, which can no longer draw liquidity from the market, seems to be gradually distancing itself from the core circle of the "Trump Group."
Crypto in 2025 belongs to the Trump family.
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