Former President’s NFT project making OpenSea great again
Donald Trump’s inaugural NFT collection has gone the same way as his bid for the Presidency in 2016. Seemingly out of nowhere, it’s gathered momentum and now everyone is discussing whether it’s good, bad or somewhere in between. His trading card collection is the NFT highlight of the week, as continued good sales contribute to a bump in trading for secondary marketplace OpenSea.
Trump Digital Trading Cards
Donald Trump was in the headlines again last week, this time because he launched his own official NFT project. It’s called Trump Digital Trading Cards and those holding multiple items get different levels of rewards. Holding 45 cards gets you an automatic place at a gala dinner in Florida. Currently, 255 people own 45 cards or more.
The collection of 45,000 items sold out in 12 hours, netting the project $4.45 million in initial sales. On secondary markets, the trading quickly gathered steam and soon enough, it had gone to the moon.
For the past seven days of sales, Trump Cards sit between Bored Apes in number one, and Mutant Apes at number three. The former President’s collection has made $11.99 million in sales volume on secondary marketplaces and recorded 68,058 in individual trades.
Trump and his team do not actually own the project and they are not in charge of the management of it. The company behind the collection is NFT INT, and it’s likely they’ll be the ones taking the 10% royalty fees, which have already gone well beyond $1 million.
The company licensed Trump’s image, likeness and name for the collection, so it’s possible that he’s already received a one-off payment for his participation.
Interestingly, blockchain detective OkHotShot pointed out that a project admin wallet minted the first 1,000 Trump Digital Trading Cards for itself in a series of transactions. Fortunately for Trump and his team, they were able to bag themselves a rare 1-of-1 card that could end up being worth thousands of dollars.
In terms of NFT utility, the list of rewards for holding the cards is what you would expect from a collection in Donald Trump’s name. And if meeting the 45th President is your sort of thing, then some of these prizes will not disappoint:
- Dinner in Miami with Trump
- Cocktails at Mar-a-Lago
- A one-on-one meeting with the man himself
- Golf at a Trump resort
- Zoom calls with the 45th President
- Signed memorabilia
So if you like sun, golf, Zoom calls and Donald Trump, picking up a few cards today is probably a worthwhile investment. If you’re into pure speculation and want to make a quick profit, it seems that you’ve already missed the boat and prices might have already peaked.
OpenSea trading volume up 94%
Despite the NFT market being well down in 2022, with trading volumes dropping 91% from $5.7 billion in January to $0.5 billion in November, OpenSea had a good seven days. Trading on the platform jumped 94% to $68.99 million.
When we look at this data compared to other NFT marketplaces, OpenSea’s numbers are particularly impressive. Every other trading platform saw its volumes fall, along with the average prices of each individual NFT sale.
If we look at data on OpenSea’s site, we can see that a few big collections went up in trading volume, and these are the ones that have contributed to increases in volume:
- Trump Digital Trading Cards – 6,378 ETH in sales – new entry.
- Bored Ape Yacht Club – 2,391 ETH in sales – increase of 48%.
- The Memes by 6529 – 1,045 ETH in sales – increase of 144%.
- The Beacon – 649 ETH in sales – increase of 164%.
- DEGEN TOONZ COLLECTION – 552 ETH in sales – increase of 134%.
- Wolf Game – 537 ETH in sales – increase of 1,578%.
Trump’s trading cards alone contributed more than $7.5 million worth of trading volume to OpenSea’s overall number, that’s 22.4% of the $33.46 million week-on-week increase. The trading cards were created on Polygon and if we look at seven-day Polygon marketplace data, we can see a 602% increase in sales for OpenSea on that network.
Two Football Apes in top 10 sales
The top 10 most expensive NFT sales this week contain nine Apes and a piece of Axie Infinity land. Unusually, not all of the Apes are bored; two of them are from a new collection that has piggy-backed on the popularity of the FIFA World Cup.
Two NFTs from the collection Football Ape Fan Club Genesis Edition fetched prices of $145,250 and $121,610. Football Ape Fan Club 6 is a golden ape called Nemar Jr (not to be confused with Brazilian legend Neymar Jr.). Football Ape Fan Club 3 has lasers for eyes, is holding a golden boot and is called Maradona.
Both of these apes were sold through OpenSea and both of the wallets that hold them were recently created. One of the wallets contains two other Football Apes and the other wallet holds no other NFTs.
These could be completely legitimate trades but they both have all of the hallmarks of suspicious activity. Doing your own research is a key skill for any good NFT trader. If something a collection comes from nowhere and has a few standout items that sell for surprising prices, it’s definitely worth doing some more digging to be certain it isn’t a scam.
Spotting scams
DappRadar has you covered with plenty of resources to help you avoid scams, rug pulls and con artists:
- Six ways to spot an NFT scam
- How to Prevent Scammers from Draining Your Wallet
- How to Protect Yourself from the Seed Phrase Scam
- Eight Ways to Check if it’s a Token Scam
We also have a weekly Twitter Spaces where we talk all about rug pulls with experts from the Web3 scene. Join us on Tuesdays at 6pm UTC where we’ll be discussing Rug Pulls: How to Spot the Usual Suspects.
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