A $300,000 Gilded Statue of Trump: A Meme Coin’s Wild Marketing Campaign
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A $300,000 Gilded Statue of Trump: A Meme Coin’s Wild Marketing Campaign
Everyone wants to profit from Trump’s presidency, but few have acted as boldly as the supporters of the PATRIOT token.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy David Yaffe-Bellany, The New York Times
Translated by Luffy, Foresight News
This statue of former President Donald Trump is dubbed “Don Colossus.” Standing 15 feet tall atop a 7,000-pound base, its total height rivals that of a two-story building. Cast in bronze and coated with a thick layer of gold leaf, the colossal sculpture draws its name from the literal translation of “Don Colossus” — “Giant Don” — a nod to Trump’s outsized persona.
For over a year, this gilded statue has been at the center of one of the most bizarre get-rich-quick schemes of the Trump era. A group of cryptocurrency investors spent $300,000 commissioning the sculpture from an artist to honor Trump’s outspoken support for digital assets.
They then leveraged the statue to promote a meme coin called PATRIOT.
Now, unexpectedly, the plan appears poised to become reality. Last month, a concrete and stainless-steel base was installed at Trump’s Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Doral, Florida. According to message records reviewed by The New York Times, Mark Burns — one of the project’s organizers and a close friend of Trump — informed collaborators that the president plans to attend the statue’s local unveiling ceremony.
“The statue looks fantastic,” Trump wrote in a December letter to Burns.
Alan Cottrill inspecting his design for the gilded Trump presidential statue in Zanesville, Ohio
Almost everyone in the cryptocurrency world has tried to profit from Trump’s presidency — whether through business deals with his family or lobbying his administration for regulatory relief. But few have pursued such an audacious approach as the backers of PATRIOT.
Meme coins are cryptocurrencies with virtually no utility beyond speculation, typically built around viral internet jokes or celebrity imagery; their value rests entirely on how much fans are willing to pay. The key to launching a successful meme coin lies in generating enough online buzz to convince potential buyers that prices will keep rising.
Building a giant statue is an expensive way to generate social media attention — yet it also represents a potentially lucrative marketing play. According to one organizer, investors who funded the statue received large allocations of the token, whose price has occasionally surged dramatically. For months, supporters of “Don Colossus” posted progress photos of the statue’s construction on X (formerly Twitter) and forged alliances within the “Make America Great Again” movement, aiming for a major marketing win: installing the statue on official Trump property.
The PATRIOT meme coin officially launched in late 2024, coinciding with Trump’s pledge to make the U.S. the “global capital of cryptocurrency,” sending its price soaring. During a weekend event in Washington, D.C., held around the presidential inauguration, supporters presented a miniature bronze version of the statue to Steve Bannon, Trump’s former advisor, and mingled with other conservative figures.
Yet repeated delays and internal disputes have cast a shadow over the scheme — offering outsiders a glimpse into the volatility of the meme coin market, rife with scams where investors often lose everything. Last year, PATRIOT’s price collapsed nearly to zero. To rush completion of the statue and revive the token’s fortunes, investors clashed with Alan Cottrill, a sculptor based in Ohio.
In text messages reviewed by The New York Times, Cottrill stated that investors still owed him $75,000 in intellectual property fees related to the statue.
“You’re using my copyrighted statue image to market your token!” he wrote last month to one of the token’s supporters.
“Yep, haha — we planned that from day one,” replied Ashley Sansalone, a cryptocurrency developer involved not only in PATRIOT but also in another meme coin project, Elon GOAT.
A sculpture of Elon Musk commissioned from Alan Cottrill
In a statement, Sansalone said Cottrill would be paid in full before the statue’s unveiling. “It’s standard practice in any commercial agreement to withhold part of the payment until final delivery,” he said.
But it remains unclear when the statue will officially go on display.
On Monday, after The New York Times contacted the White House and Trump Organization regarding the PATRIOT token, Eric Trump, the president’s son, posted a statement on X.
“We appreciate the enthusiasm and support,” he said. “However, we must clarify that we have had no involvement whatsoever with this token.”
Building “Don Colossus”
The idea for “Don Colossus” was born in a Telegram group chat — a platform widely used by crypto enthusiasts to share investment tips and hype new tokens. It was July 2024, shortly after Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he defiantly raised his fist, blood visible on his ear.
Sansalone wanted to turn that image of resistance into the central motif of a meme coin. He teamed up with right-wing activist Dustin Stockton, and later brought in Brock Pierce — a well-connected cryptocurrency investor embroiled in numerous legal and financial controversies.
Soon after the bullet grazed Trump’s ear, Sansalone reached out to 73-year-old Alan Cottrill, whose bronze statue of Thomas Edison now resides in the U.S. Capitol. Over decades, Cottrill has created sculptures of more than a dozen U.S. presidents, including 10-foot-tall monuments of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Cottrill standing in a room filled with sculptures
The cryptocurrency investors wanted Trump’s statue to surpass previous presidential sculptures in scale — and requested several aesthetic modifications.
“My original rendering was extremely lifelike,” Cottrill said in an interview last month. “But these crypto guys asked me to slim down his neck and trim some of the excess weight from his body.”
By the time of Trump’s inauguration, Cottrill had completed the bronze statue — un-gilded at that point — which stood as his tallest work to date. In December, Trump shared a Breitbart article about the project on social media, noting that Stockton was coordinating with the Presidential Inaugural Committee to unveil the statue during inauguration weekend.
The timing of the post was perfect: PATRIOT had just launched.
Its website declared: “The people’s cryptocurrency — a statue no one can erase.”
But soon afterward, the project suffered two major setbacks. Harsh winter weather in Washington caused logistical complications, forcing the unveiling to be postponed; and shortly before the inauguration, Trump launched his own official meme coin, TRUMP.
As crypto traders scrambled to buy the official token, Stockton and Pierce hosted a “Patriot Award” event at the National Press Club in Washington, handing out miniature versions of the statue.
“The energy in the room immediately dropped — because Trump’s token suddenly exploded in price,” Cottrill recalled.
By the end of January, PATRIOT’s price had plunged more than 90%.
“Prime Real Estate”
Despite these setbacks, the cryptocurrency investors continued pushing forward with their marketing campaign. In February last year, disgraced former Congressman George Santos appeared on Fox News holding a miniature Trump statue — explicitly mentioning the PATRIOT token.
A small gilded Trump statue raised in a fist, surrounded by several darker versions of the same figure
Stockton reposted the clip on X, declaring: “This kind of exposure is priceless!” In a brief phone interview, Santos said: “I was paid to promote it — and I’ve always been upfront about that.”
Investors also courted another influential ally: Burns. A prominent pastor and trusted confidant of Trump, Burns is sometimes referred to as the president’s unofficial “spiritual advisor.”
After Pierce introduced him to the team, Burns began participating in the statue project. He quickly became instrumental in reviving it, proposing that the bronze statue be gilded.
“The president just asked me for photos of the statue after gilding,” Burns wrote to collaborators in November last year.
Trump’s wish came true. Sansalone told the team he consulted a New York-based gold-leaf supplier that had previously worked on Trump Tower. Cottrill shared updated photos of the finished statue.
“It’s dazzling — absolutely exquisite,” Sansalone replied.
“Wow… send this straight to the president,” Burns wrote.
Clearly, Trump was impressed. Last month, Cottrill traveled to Florida to install the 7,000-pound base at Trump’s Doral Golf Resort & Spa. Stockton boasted on social media that it was “prime real estate.” In a January text to collaborators, Burns said White House schedulers were “actively finalizing” the date for Trump’s official attendance at the unveiling ceremony.
Trump National Doral Golf Club in Florida
This should have been Cottrill’s moment of triumph — yet he says he’s had enough of the crypto investors behind the project.
Cottrill said he didn’t realize until fall 2024 that the investors were using his artwork to promote a cryptocurrency — a move he believes violates his intellectual property rights.
Ultimately, he struck a deal with the investors: they agreed to pay $150,000 for the statue’s intellectual property rights. But he claims he still hasn’t received the remaining balance — plus other outstanding fees — leaving them owing him roughly $90,000 in total.
Cryptocurrency investors demanded Trump’s statue be exceptionally tall and requested specific aesthetic modifications
“In my view, they never actually purchased those rights — they’re using them illegally,” he said. “The statue will not leave my foundry until every penny is paid.”
But the project’s organizers argue the venture hasn’t turned a profit.
Burns said he has neither requested nor received any compensation. Stockton, speaking to reporters, described PATRIOT as purely a fundraising tool — “to finance all aspects related to the statue.”
“I haven’t seen anyone get rich off this,” Stockton said.
Kimberly Benza, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization, said the company only learned of the meme coin this week, after The New York Times inquired about it. She declined to comment on whether the statue’s unveiling ceremony would proceed as planned.
The spectacle hasn’t stopped the project’s social media promotion. An X account linked to the token recently posted photos of the Doral base and pinned a message detailing how to purchase the meme coin.
“This dream is still alive,” Sansalone said during a livestream with Burns on January 16.
Beyond the giant statue, the team hopes to present Trump with a gilded miniature version. “We’d love to see one displayed in the Oval Office,” Sansalone said.
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