Donald Trump NFTs under fire for internal minting, design plagiarism Donald Trump NFTs under fire for internal minting, design plagiarism
The Donald Trump NFT trading card project has faced criticism over internal minting, licensing issues, and alleged design plagiarism.
2 min read
Updated: Aug. 18, 2023 at 5:01 pm UTC
Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
The Donald Trump-branded NFT trading card project has come under fire after it was revealed that the project minted 1000 NFTs internally — 68 of which were considered the rarest in the collection.
The rare NFTs included 47 of 179 1/1 ‘s and 21 of 70 autographed NFTs.
Super Rare NFTs minted internally
On-chain analyst, OKHotshot (@NFTherder) reported on Dec. 17 that 1000 Donald Trump NFT trading cards were minted and then sent to a Gnosis vault wallet (Gnosis safe) created on Dec. 14 — just a day before the project launched.
2/ The vault wallet, a gnosis safe, was created on 2022-12-14. A day before the DT nft launch
On launch day a DT funding wallet sent matic to a DT admin wallet. Which then minted 1k nfts to the gnosis safe: 0xfb65415Ca83B69DA9bC56B4C9C2334fa402baCd7 pic.twitter.com/QLvIcA5p6X
— OKHotshot (@NFTherder) December 17, 2022
OKHotshot claimed that a total of 26% of the 1/1 NFTs and 28% of the autographed NFTs were minted and sent to the Gnosis safe. These highly rare NFT traits are found in just 0.40% and 0.16% of all cards respectively. The Gnosis safe holdings can be reviewed on Opensea.
The internally minted 1000 NFTs can be accounted for in the FAQs of the official website, which states:
“Only 45,000 Trump Digital Trading Cards will be created in this initial series. 44,000 of them will be made available for sale”
However, it was not stated explicitly that over 25% of both the rarest trait NFTs would be internally minted and sent to — what seems to be — a team-owned Gnosis safe.
Extra outline on how they minted the first thousand Donald Trump nfts to the gnosis safe. * buyers had a strict limit of a 100 max nft per purchaser/household. pic.twitter.com/akwFJMxWyG
— OKHotshot (@NFTherder) December 19, 2022
Donald Trump does not own the project
The Donald Trump NFT project is not owned by Donald Trump but instead owned by NFT International LLC., as stated in the official website’s footnotes:
“NFT INT LLC is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates. NFT INT LLC uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Digital LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”
However, ownership of the project is obfuscated in the official website’s statement on the landing page that states:
“For the first time ever, collect your own rare digital collectible Trading Card by President Trump.”
Furthermore, Trump’s post on Truth Social on Dec. 15 — prior to the launch — added further ambiguity to the matter:
Design copywriting issues
Claims that the Donald Trump NFT trading cards designs were taken from Shutterstock and other images have been circulating on Twitter.
Matthew Sheffield, National Correspondent at The Young Turks digital media, created a thread on Dec. 16 revealing several alleged examples of stock images used for the Donald Trump NFT trading card designs.
It appears that Donald Trump's NFT image of himself as a cowboy comes from an Amazon image that was slightly altered. https://t.co/B0b2SUSbX9 pic.twitter.com/OA8L2rHw4J
— Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield) December 16, 2022
Centralized and stored off-chain
OKHotshot also identified that all metadata and artwork was being stored off-chain. This means that anyone with access to that storage and domain has the ability to change the properties and artwork without revealing the changes on the blockchain for user verification.
4/ Looking further we find that all metadata and artwork are centrally stored off-chain. Ppl that have access to the domain/storage can change properties and artwork without being able to verify this on the blockchain pic.twitter.com/mEQIegMuf1
— OKHotshot (@NFTherder) December 17, 2022
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Josh O'Sullivan
Josh has been writing for a decade and is passionate about mainstream crypto adoption, bringing positive financial change to the masses through crypto and decentralized finance as a whole.
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NFT International LLC
NFT International LLC is the company that licensed the rights to use Donald Trump’s image for the Trump Digital Trading Cards (NFTs).
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York City.
