UPDATED: Trump to launch branded crypto trading application

Trump to launch branded crypto trading application

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UPDATE, June 3 at 3:00pm: Following publication of this story, Magic Eden pushed out its announcement for the Trump Wallet at 1:35pm. The company described it as the “Official $TRUMP Wallet by President Trump” created in partnership with the $TRUMP memecoin team. The memecoin project is officially operated by Fight Fight Fight LLC (run by Bill Zanker), though the Trump Organization-affiliated CIC Digital also holds a substantial quantity of tokens.

At 2:18pm, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted: “The Trump Organization has zero involvement with this wallet product. @EricTrump and I know nothing about it. Stay tuned—World Liberty Financial @worldlibertyfi, which we have been working tirelessly on, will be launching our official wallet soon.” Minutes later, Eric Trump confirmed: “I run [the Trump Organization] and I know nothing about this project!” At 3pm, Barron Trump added: “To be clear, our family has zero involvement with this wallet.”

Magic Eden is a relatively big player in the crypto world, so this is not a case of some nobody creating a fake project pretending to be an official Trump-affiliated app. It’s not clear where communication broke down between Magic Eden, the $TRUMP memecoin project, and the Trump Organization and other Trump-related entities like World Liberty Financial, but this launch just became very, very messy.

UPDATE, June 3 at 5:00pm: The Twitter account for the Trump memecoin posted its own announcement, seeming to confirm that the breakdown has happened between the Zanker team and the Trump sons. Meanwhile, Twitter suspended the new @TrumpWalletApp account, which had previously been verified with a Magic Eden badge.

As of this update, President Trump has not issued a statement pertaining to the project, and Magic Eden has not addressed the Trump sons’ comments.

UPDATE, June 3 at 7:40pm: Eric Trump tweeted, “This project is not authorized by [the Trump Organization]. @MagicEden I would be extremely careful using our name in a project that has not been approved and is unknown to anyone in our organization.” The New York Times separately reported that he had threatened legal action against Magic Eden over the project and allegedly unauthorized use of the Trump name and brand.

ORIGINAL: President Trump is on the cusp of adding a Trump-branded cryptocurrency wallet and trading application to his ever expanding list of cryptocurrency business ventures. Named the “$TRUMP Wallet”, and branded similarly to the $TRUMP memecoin issued by the president shortly before his inauguration, the project will encourage fans of President Trump to trade the $TRUMP memecoin, as well as bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets.

The project, which has not previously been reported, is being developed in partnership with the cryptocurrency firm Magic Eden. Though the project has yet to be announced by either the Trump team or Magic Eden, a web application inviting users to sign up for a waitlist became visible on the TrumpWallet.com domain on the morning of June 3, suggesting an announcement is imminent. The domain had recently changed hands on May 2. The page also links to a Twitter account that was registered in May.

A banner on the waitlist website encourages signups by promising “$1 MILLION in TRUMP REWARDS!”, and a terms and conditions page outlines a planned promotion in which those who sign up for the app will be entered to win “Trump Boxes” containing between 1 and 50 $TRUMP memecoins (valued at $11.30 – $565 at current prices), which are distributed based on a referral program. There is also a random drawing for one waitlist entrant to receive $100,000 in $TRUMP.

The terms of the deal between Trump entities and Magic Eden have not been disclosed, but his profits from other crypto projects have stemmed from revenue sharing agreements, licensing his likeness to be used in crypto projects, and direct stakes in the underlying businesses. Trump’s memecoin and NFT projects were the brainchild of longtime Trump associate Bill Zanker, and an update to the waitlist website after this article was published disclosed that “Magic Eden partnered with GetTrumpMemes.​com to create the first and only $​TRUMP Wallet”.

A Trump crypto wallet is only the latest in a long and ever growing list of Trump crypto ventures, which include the memecoin, the World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency platform and stablecoin issuer, planned crypto ETFs by Trump’s Truth Social platform, and several NFT projects. World Liberty Financial also plans to launch a decentralized trading application, and the CEO of Truth Social’s parent company TMTG has also expressed plans to expand into the decentralized finance (defi) world, leaving questions as to whether these various Trump-affiliated crypto projects, some of which are managed by separate entities, might wind up competing with one another.

Ethics watchdogs, members of Congress, and even some members of Trump’s crypto world fanbase have expressed growing concerns about Trump’s crypto entanglements, including the degree to which he is personally profiting from the office of the presidency and from businesses in an industry he has been rapidly deregulating. On May 6, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened a preliminary inquiry into $TRUMP, World Liberty Financial, and Trump’s other ventures.¹

Magic Eden and Slingshot Finance

Magic Eden began as an NFT trading platform in 2021, and has received venture funding amounting to around $150 million from backers including Paradigm, Sequoia, Coinbase Ventures, and Electric Capital.² The company recently branched out into wider digital asset trading with their acquisition of Slingshot Finance just this April. Slingshot Finance is a defi crypto trading application and self-custodial wallet.

Slingshot boasts that it allows users to trade over five million different cryptocurrencies. Slingshot’s app store listings advertise that traders can buy and sell popular tokens including Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink, or memecoins including “TRUMP, FARTCOIN, GIGA, and BONK”.

The mockup of the $TRUMP Wallet on the waitlist website resembles the Slingshot Finance application somewhat, with identical navigation items showing trending cryptocurrencies and a leaderboard. The waitlist website also uses Slingshot Finance’s privacy policy and terms and conditions documents instead of its own, although these may be placeholders to be replaced before the waitlist officially goes live. However, the Trump Wallet waitlist website shares little in the way of information about the final design and functionality of the future Trump app, which could be a completely separate product, a reskin of the Slingshot app, or a version of the app with more limited functionality and token offerings.

Slingshot currently does little to moderate the tokens listed on its platform, some of which have offensive names or seek to trick buyers into purchasing identically-named tokens as well-known projects, raising questions of whether an official Trump-branded app may also invite users to buy fake $TRUMP tokens or tokens named for racial slurs.

Slingshot earns revenue through swap fees — additional fees charged to customers making transactions on the app. It’s not yet evident whether fees collected by the Trump Wallet will go to Trump-affiliated entities, Magic Eden, or be split between the two. Magic Eden may also intend to profit from the popularity of its Trump Wallet by prominently listing its own $ME token for trading, which it launched in August 2024. While the token is nowhere near as popular as bitcoin and Solana, which are among the ten most popularly traded cryptocurrencies, the mockup of the app nevertheless prominently features $ME (currently ranked #296 on CoinMarketCap’s list of popular tokens).

The terms and conditions for the “Trump Boxes” promotion disclaim any collaboration with outside parties: “This Promotion is sponsored and administered exclusively by [Slingshot Finance, its affiliates, and parent entities] and is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with X, TruthSocial, or any other third parties.”

Magic Eden and Trump

On May 22, Magic Eden CEO and co-founder Jack Lu posted a photograph from the Trump memecoin dinner, where he posed alongside Magic Eden’s Chief Business Officer Chris Akhavan and Slingshot founder Clinton Bembry. “Honored to be at the Trump Crypto dinner with @GetTrumpMemes. Going to be a great night!” he wrote. Attendees spent between $55,000 to nearly $38 million apiece on $TRUMP memecoins to secure invitations to the event.

The history between Trump and Magic Eden goes back further than that. In March 2024, the Trump Cards NFT project announced it was moving to Magic Eden, which they said had “set up a dedicated team to help you manage your Trump Digital Trading Cards collection”.

Regulatory questions

Self-custodial wallets and decentralized finance remain in somewhat of a regulatory vacuum, and draft cryptocurrency market structure legislation championed by the Trump administration and currently under discussion in Congress seeks to explicitly carve out defi from the remit of both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the two primary regulatory agencies responsible for crypto markets. In April, Trump repealed the IRS’s “DeFi Broker Rule”, which would have required defi protocols like Slingshot to collect and disclose information to tax authorities about transactions on their platforms, and the identities of those making them.

As it stands, Slingshot Finance does not collect know-your-customer information on its customers, although those who use credit cards, debit cards, or payment apps like PayPal to purchase tokens on the app do have to submit KYC information to Slingshot’s payment processing partner, Moonpay. Slingshot’s terms and conditions prohibit users who reside in sanctioned countries, such as North Korea, Iran, and Russia, from using its app; however, without collecting KYC information, it’s not clear to what extent they successfully enforce these restrictions.

It’s not entirely clear whether Magic Eden is building out a KYC program for the Trump Wallet, or if it too will allow users to transact anonymously. The Trump Boxes promotion limits winners to residents of the United States, and the promotion terms suggest that it’s possible KYC will apply to all wallet registrants.

To claim a Prize providing for an award of $TRUMP in this Promotion, all potential winners will be required to create a Trump Wallet powered by Sponsor (free to create an account). Creating an account will require the collection of personal information for identity verification purposes (including, if applicable, a valid and current driver’s license or state ID, tax ID number, or completion of a set of identity-verification questions).

Magic Eden and spokespeople for President Trump or the $TRUMP memecoin did not immediately respond to inquiries about the project.

This article was updated on June 3 at 1:34pm to reflect that the wallet is a collaboration with GetTrumpMemes.com, which is an entity run by Fight Fight Fight LLC and Bill Zanker.