Which factions exist within Trump's crypto empire?
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Which factions exist within Trump's crypto empire?
Crypto in 2025 is the Trump family's crypto.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: BUBBLE,律动
In the early hours today, MagicEden announced a collaboration with $TRUMP to launch Trump Wallet. Immediately following the news, the market cap of MagicEden's token $ME surged nearly 30% from $850 million to $1.1 billion within two hours. However, this momentum quickly reversed as Eric Trump and Donald J. Trump Jr., along with Barron Trump—who had never before posted on X—issued statements denying any association with the announcement.
Eric Trump even posted twice, warning MagicEden’s team: “I would be very careful about using our name on projects we haven’t approved and where no one in our organization knows anything about it.” As the Trump sons publicly disavowed the project, the $ME market cap dropped to $960 million and currently hovers around $1 billion.
Announced One Second, Denied the Next: What’s Behind the 'Trump Wallet'?
The story first emerged at 12:10 AM (UTC+8) today when software engineer and crypto researcher Molly White revealed on X that "Trump will launch a branded cryptocurrency wallet and trading app." She discovered domain and website data linked to TrumpWallet.com, noting that the site had already gone live before any official announcement, offering a waitlist signup and promotional rewards in $TRUMP tokens. Bitcoin Magazine later covered the development.
An hour later, at 1:35 AM, MagicEden officially announced its partnership with $TRUMP to build @TrumpWalletApp. After announcing on its main account, many team members shared the post. Jack, co-founder and CEO of MagicEden, added on X: “Sign up for the waitlist now! Users who join will be eligible for $1 million in $TRUMP rewards when the app launches. Users who refer at least one person can win a $100,000 prize.” With the referral campaign launched, invitation codes for TrumpWalletApp rapidly spread across the community.
Another hour passed. At 2:21 AM, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump tweeted: “I run the Trump Company, but I have no knowledge of this project,” tagging WLFI, AmericanBTC (in which he holds shares), and the $TRUMP token itself. Shortly after, other family members including Donald J. Trump Jr. and Barron Trump, along with key WLFI team members, shared and condemned the initiative.
Despite widespread pushback from “WLFI members,” both the TRUMP meme coin’s official account and MagicEden team members confirmed the project, creating confusion. The original X account for Trump Wallet has since been suspended by Twitter. Prior to suspension, the account was under MagicEden’s Blue Checkmark verification. Website policies—including privacy policy, terms and conditions, and promotional details—are managed by Slingshot Finance, a project acquired by MagicEden just two months ago.
The Two Factions of the Trump Crypto Empire
This isn't the first time the Trump team has shown internal instability. During his previous presidency, factional struggles and staff turnover were common. Now, with cryptocurrency becoming central to Trump’s political agenda, competing interest groups have become even more fragmented—everyone wants a piece of the pie.
Meme Coin Issuers: Trump’s Longtime Business Allies
Notably, MagicEden CEO Jack recently attended a $TRUMP dinner alongside Clinton Bembry Jr., founder of Slingshot (the recently acquired firm)—a moment captured and retweeted by the official $TRUMP meme account. On June 3, the TRUMP Meme team airdropped three distinct Solana NFTs to wallets of users who participated in the “Dinner with Trump” event. In hindsight, this may have served as a soft launch for the Trump Wallet App.
From left to right: Clinton Bembry Jr. (Slingshot founder), Jack (MagicEden founder), Chris Akhavan (MagicEden Chief商务官)
The architect behind the May 2025 $TRUMP dinner in Washington is Bill Zanker, a longtime friend of President Trump. Zanker is the authorized person ("authorized person") of Fight Fight Fight LLC—the company behind the $TRUMP token. This entity jointly holds 80% of the $TRUMP memecoin with CIC Digital LLC, representing billions in value.
Photo of Bill Zanker with Trump
CIC Digital LLC was founded in 2021 by John Marion, one of Trump’s lawyers, and former advisor Nick Luna. As an affiliate of the Trump Organization, CIC Digital collaborates with Fight Fight Fight LLC to operate the $TRUMP token website and share transaction revenues.
CIC Digital authorizes the use of Trump’s name and likeness for NFT projects like Trump Digital Trading Cards. Zanker is widely seen as a key driver of Trump’s NFT ventures. Reports indicate he proposed the NFT series to Trump in 2022 and met with him at Mar-a-Lago to discuss feasibility. CIC Digital licenses Trump’s brand to NFT INT LLC (a Delaware-registered company), with Zanker playing a central role in organizing and promoting the effort—though he does not directly own NFT INT LLC.
Magic Eden, a leading NFT marketplace, previously partnered with the Trump Digital Trading Cards project. In March 2024, the Trump card NFT project announced migration to Magic Eden, stating the platform had formed a dedicated team to help users manage their Trump digital card collections.
This isn’t their first collaboration. Jack and Zanker have known each other since around 2000 and worked together multiple times. Zanker initially founded The Learning Annex, an education company he aimed to grow into the “McDonald’s of education.” Started in 1980 from a New York studio apartment with $5,000, it grew rapidly, generating over $100 million in revenue. Featured speakers included motivational speaker Tony Robbins, former boxer George Foreman, and Donald Trump. In 2002, Trump delivered a talk titled “Think Big: Nothing Is Impossible!” Zanker claimed he paid Trump $1.5 million per appearance; Trump later admitted it was actually $400,000.
In 2007, they co-authored *Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life*. They also launched a short-lived crowdfunding platform called FundAnything in 2013, funded by Zanker with $1 million of his own money. A year later, Trump distanced himself, tweeting only a few times and saying, “Raising funds took too much of my time and energy.” The project soon collapsed. It wasn’t until 2022 that Zanker revived the idea with the concept of “Trump NFTs,” reigniting their partnership in crypto.
Bill Zanker and Trump promoting their co-authored book *Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life*
The $TRUMP website states that “TRUMP” is a registered trademark of DTTM Operations LLC. The product is not distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization, or any of their affiliates or officers. DTTM Operations LLC, established in 2015 in New York, operates across real estate, hospitality, entertainment, fashion, and political services, and owns at least 137 trademarks associated with the Trump brand.
DTTM Operations LLC also holds the trademark for “THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION.” The $TRUMP token’s copyright and IP rights do not come from Eric Trump-led THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION, but from DTTM Operations LLC.
Although Trump claimed during his presidency that daily operations were handed to his children (e.g., Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump), DTTM Operations LLC remains widely viewed as a key entity for protecting and managing Trump-related assets.
Besides Bill Zanker, David Sacks—the chairman of the Crypto Council—is also believed by the community to play a major role in $TRUMP. Best known as a co-founder of PayPal and the creator of Yammer (sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion), Sacks is also a prominent investor at crypto venture firm Multicoin and a well-known Solana maximalist.
“One of the dumbest attacks against me this year was claiming I dumped SOL tokens on retail investors. If that were true, they’d all be rich by now—congratulations to everyone holding SOL,” Sacks said, having held SOL through the FTX collapse.
Since $TRUMP is deployed on the Solana blockchain, and Sacks remained silent on these “zero-sum meme coins” during Trump’s token launch, many suspect the Crypto Council chair and PayPal Mafia member is likely involved.
Further reading: *Silicon Valley Turns Right: Peter Thiel, A16Z, and the Political Ambitions of Cryptocurrency*
Shortly after $TRUMP’s launch, Melania Trump’s namesake token $MELANIA was also released. Ryan Selkis, founder of Messari, urged Trump to fire those responsible, citing “lack of professional capability, potential for significant financial and reputational damage, and failure to properly consider Trump’s interests.”
Compared to $TRUMP, $MELANIA’s rollout was far sloppier—unfinished front-end code, unoptimized images, a website built the day before launch, and poorly drafted legal text. Many netizens speculated the two projects were executed differently and likely by separate teams.
As one community member put it: “If my sources are correct, $TRUMP was pushed by crypto czar David Sacks, while $MELANIA was handled by the World Liberty team. But one thing is certain: these two tokens were not developed by the same team.”
WLFI ‘Interest Group’: Middle East Envoy Sends Father-Son Duo
History repeats itself. Just as $TRUMP and $MELANIA once overlapped, so too did today’s events unfold: shortly after MagicEden’s $TRUMP wallet announcement, Trump’s eldest son declared that WLFI would launch its own official wallet. Unlike memecoins, there can only be one “Trump Wallet” app—leading directly to today’s chaotic “Monkey King” identity crisis.
Erik Trump escalated the conflict by sending text messages to *The New York Times*, stating the Trump family would pursue legal action against the “$TRUMP Wallet,” despite it being promoted on social media by an account tied to Bill Zanker, another figure within the broader “Trump interest group.” “No agreement has been reached,” wrote Eric Trump. “This product has not been approved.”
WLFI was founded on September 16, 2024, when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump entered the X space. The company was established by real estate magnate Steve Witkoff and his son Zach Witkoff, with Eric Trump and Donald J. Trump Jr. joining as team members.
Justin Sun (left), Zach Witkoff (center), and Eric Trump (right) attending the Token2049 crypto conference in Dubai
Zach Witkoff, co-founder of the crypto firm World Liberty Financial, announced at a Dubai event that the company had secured a deal with Tahnoon’s enterprise to purchase $2 billion worth of its USD1 stablecoin. The Witkoffs and the Trump family are expected to earn tens of millions annually—“The Trump family holds 60% of World Liberty Financial,” he noted.
Since last fall, the Trump family has launched several independent crypto initiatives: American Bitcoin, $TRUMP, $MELANIA, World Liberty Financial, and Trump Media & Technology Group. Recently, their crypto activities have continued unabated—not only the dual-wallet fiasco today, but also Truth Social’s filing for a Bitcoin ETF, $MELANIA’s liquidity partnership with Wintermute, and WLFI’s airdrop of 47 USD1 tokens to early token buyers—indicating progress in the stablecoin arena.
At this juncture, the team behind the now-stagnant $TRUMP token and Trump NFTs—having exhausted their market advantages and unable to attract further liquidity—appears to be gradually drifting from the core Trump circle.
In 2025, crypto belongs to the Trump family.
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