In brief
- Donald Trump’s NFT collection is losing value as sales fall following a brief spike over the weekend.
- Trading volume fell 57% from Sunday to Monday, while the floor price for the NFTs has dropped 74% since the Saturday peak.
Donald Trump’s first official NFT collection was the talk of the crypto world late last week, captivating Twitter and late night TV in the process. But after prices and trading volume surged over the weekend, both metrics have fallen sharply as the hype around the disgraced former U.S. president’s project is apparently fading.
Trump’s digital trading cards, which are minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, peaked on Saturday, December 17 with over $3.5 million worth of trading volume, per data from CryptoSlam. Sales price rose even higher on Sunday, with the NFTsselling for an average of just over $680 apiece, although total volume fell to nearly $1.95 million for the day.
On Monday, however, day-over-day trading dropped 57% to about $836,000 worth of ETH, with the average sale price falling to about $466. Today, the cheapest available Trump NFT up for sale on leading marketplace OpenSea is listed at just 0.21 ETH, or about $255.
Trump launched his digital trading card NFTs last Thursday, with 44,000 of the NFTs selling for $99 apiece in the primary sale. Buyers were incentivized by the possibility of winning a meet-and-greet or dinner with the former president, amid other potential perks. Another 1,000 NFTs were kept back by the project’s creators, for a total supply of 45,000.
Despite widespread mockery and criticism of the project—even from some of Trump’s own supporters—the project sold out within 24 hours and fueled secondary market demand. Since then, the project has racked up over $8.7 million worth of secondary trades.
Momentum peaked over the weekend, with the floor price—or cheapest listed NFT—hitting 0.84 ETH (about $990) on Saturday. Prices rose and fell in a volatile market ahead of the NFTs being skewered on NBC’s late-night comedy show, Saturday Night Live. Just three days later, the floor price has fallen 74% when measured in USD.
Trump’s digital trading cards project is ranked only 10th on CryptoSlam’s list of the top-selling projects over the last 24 hours. It has about $472,000 worth of sales during that span, while the Bored Ape Yacht Club tops the list with $3.8 million worth of NFT sales.
Beyond it being a pairing of already-divisive subjects (Trump and NFTs), the project has also been criticized for apparently using stolen artwork for some of its cards. Furthermore, the 1,000 NFTs kept by the project’s creators appear to contain a disproportionate amount of the “rare” collectibles, prompting further skepticism from NFT observers.