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The Trump family’s blitz into cryptocurrency has been a confusing entry into a market that is known to most people for being pretty confusing already. There is a meme coin. There is a stablecoin. There is a decentralized platform for crypto lending; that Trump-linked company has its own token, too. There are Trump NFTs. There is a Trump bitcoin-mining concern. There is a Trump-branded bitcoin exchange-traded fund reportedly coming soon. And on Tuesday, there was the launch of the “Official $TRUMP Wallet by President Trump,” allowing cryptocurrency enthusiasts to buy and sell the stuff on a Trump-branded platform.
Or was there the launch of an official Trump wallet?
It seemed plausible enough. Why wouldn’t his cryptocurrency team try to milk a few more dollars out of the presidency that has already inflated the family’s net worth by billions in the past few months? There was even a post from the Trump meme-coin official account promoting the wallet:
But 43 minutes after the announcement, Donald Trump Jr. responded on X saying that the Trump Organization has “no involvement” with such a wallet and that he and Eric — the family’s core crypto boosters — didn’t even know about its existence. Even Barron, who never says anything, said the family has “zero involvement” with the wallet.
So what happened? The announcement came from Trump’s meme-coin team, an LLC called Fight Fight Fight that is run by a 71-year-old named Bill Zanker. He is a serial entrepreneur who worked with Trump on a book almost two decades ago and once founded a chain of stores called the Great American Backrub. Since late last year, he has been a major player in the expansion of Trump’s crypto holdings, including the controversial meme-coin dinner that he organized in May.
After a decent stretch of making money off the presidency, it appears there is now some conflict in Trump crypto world — or at least confusion over who has the authority to launch a new project. In a series of texts to the New York Times, Eric threatened legal action against the crypto-wallet team, saying “there is no deal for this product.” But for those disappointed by the botched crypto-wallet rollout, fear not. In the fracas over the product unveiled on Tuesday, Trump Jr. announced that their family has been “working tirelessly” on their own official wallet that will be launching soon.
