Trump NFT Mania Gets a Very Short Term as Sales Nearly Vanish

It’s been less than a month since Donald Trump’s official NFT trading cards launched to a mostly perplexed response, even from his supporters, and the ensuing hype was sizable but short-lived. Now the NFT trading card project has slumped to new lows as trading demand continues to vanish.

Secondary market trading volume for the Trump Digital Trading Cards project hit a new daily low of just over $21,000 on Sunday, per data from CryptoSlam. The largest single-day tally for the project so far in 2023 is just shy of $33,000 on January 5.

Sunday’s tally marks a more than 99% decrease in daily volume from the peak day on December 17, when more than $3.5 million worth of the NFTs were traded soon after the original primary sale. There were more than 2,000 unique buyers on that date last month, and over 3,300 unique buyers on December 16 as prices started climbing.

But on Sunday, when sales volume hit a new daily low, CryptoSlam reported just 28 unique buyers across 98 total transactions. Likewise, prices have fallen sharply since the peak. The floor price, or cost of the cheapest-listed NFT on a marketplace, has dropped from a high of about 0.84 ETH ($995) on December 17 to just 0.16 ETH ($215) today.

That’s still more than double the original $99 mint price, representing a potential profit for users who purchased one of the digital cards during the primary sale. However, holders who purchased on the secondary market at or near the peak of the hype may find diminishing resale demand for the disgraced former president’s digital collectibles.

The NFT collection spans 45,000 digital cards showing the one-time leader in fantastical cosplay, dressed up as an astronaut, cowboy, or superhero. The collectibles were minted on Polygon, an Ethereum sidechain, and offered initial buyers a chance to win perks like dinner or a meet-and-greet opportunity with Trump.

The project sold out 44,000 of the NFTs within 24 hours, generating more than $4 million from the primary sale, with the other 1,000 collectibles held back by the creators. Since then, the Trump NFTs have yielded more than $10 million worth of secondary market trades, with the Utah-based company behind the collection taking a 10% cut from any sales on marketplaces that enforce resale royalties.

The NFTs were widely mocked across social media and on late-night television shows, including on “Saturday Night Live,” and quickly surged in value and trading activity.

But as the latest sales data shows, the initial spike has rapidly given way to apathy among traders who might have bought in “for the lulz” just a few short weeks back. Even Crypto Twitter is barely paying attention to them anymore, moving on to Solana’s dog-themed BONK token and other so-called “degen” plays.

To be fair, it’s very common for a prominent NFT collection to surge in value and trading demand just after its launch, and then see that momentum fall off a cliff. That happened with Art Gobblers, for example—a controversial Ethereum project that debuted in late October and quickly surged. On Sunday, it racked up less sales volume than Trump’s project, per CryptoSlam, with just over $16,000 worth across five transactions.

It’s much rarer for an NFT project to sustain hype over a long period of time or peak long after the initial mint, as we’ve seen with the industry-leading Bored Ape Yacht Club, for example. So far, Trump’s NFT collection doesn’t appear to be bucking the trend: it’s only the 96th best-selling project over the last 24 hours, according to CryptoSlam’s ranking.