Early this morning, MagicEden announced a partnership with $Trump to launch the Trump Wallet. Upon the news, the market value of the MagicEden token $ME surged from $850 million to $1.1 billion in just two hours, a nearly 30% increase. However, soon after, Donald Trump's son EricTrump and DonaldJTrumpJr, along with Barron Trump, who had not previously tweeted with the X tag, all posted denying any association with the announcement.

Eric even tweeted twice and warned the MagicEden team, "MagicEden, I will be very cautious about the unauthorized use of our name in projects that no one in our organization is aware of." Following the Trump sons' "debunking behavior," the market value of $ME plummeted to $960 million and is now hovering around $1 billion.

Announcing one second, debunking the next – What's the deal with the "Trump Wallet"?

The news initially broke at 12:10 a.m. today (UTC+8) when software engineer and crypto researcher Molly White first revealed on X that "Trump will launch a branded cryptocurrency wallet and trading app." She discovered domain and website information related to TrumpWallet.com and noted that the website had already gone live before the official announcement, offering wallet waitlist registration and promoting $TRUMP token rewards. Bitcoin Magazine later covered the incident.

At 1:35 a.m., an hour later, MagicEden officially announced its collaboration with $TRUMP to build the @TrumpWalletApp wallet. After the announcement on the main account, many team members also retweeted, with MagicEden's co-founder and CEO Jack tweeting to supplement, "Register now to join our waitlist! After the app is live, there will be a $1 million $TRUMP reward. Users recommended by at least one person will have the opportunity to win a $100,000 prize," and as the "invitation event" kicked off, the invite code for TrumpWalletApp quickly spread throughout the community.

Another hour passed, and it was 2:21 AM. Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump, tweeted, saying, "I run the Trump Organization, but I am completely unaware of this project," and tagged WLFI, his own holdings AmericanBTC, and the "main character" of this event, $Trump. Subsequently, family members including DonaldJTrumpJr and Barron Trump, as well as various members of the WLFI team, reposted the tweet and denounced this behavior.

Despite the opposition from various "WLFI members," both the TrumpMeme official account and the MagicEden team have confirmed this. The conflicting statements from both sides are quite perplexing. The original X account of Trump Wallet has already been banned by Twitter; prior to this ban, the account was subordinated to a MagicEden Gold Standard account. From the official website, it is evident that the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions, as well as any "Promotion Events," are all managed by the Slingshot Finance project acquired by MagicEden two months ago.

The Two Major "Factions" of Trump's Crypto Group

This is not the first time the Trump team has shown signs of instability. During the previous presidential term, there were significant power struggles and changes within the Trump administration, with resignations being a common occurrence. In the current term, with the focus of the Trump administration shifting to the cryptocurrency field, the teams associated with vested interests have become more divided, with everyone wanting a piece of the pie.

The Meme Coin Issuer, a Long-Term Business Partner of Trump

Interestingly, from MagicEden CEO Jack's tweet, it can be seen that not long ago, he attended an evening event with the founder of Slingshot mentioned earlier, and this tweet was also retweeted by $Trump meme's official account. On June 3, the TRUMP Meme official account announced that they had airdropped three different Solana NFTs to wallets of users who participated in the "Dine with Trump" event. In hindsight, it seems like a form of promotion for the "Trump Wallet App."

From left to right, Slingshot founder Clinton Bembry Jr, MagicEden founder Jack, MagicEden Chief Business Officer Chris Akhavan

The person behind the planning of the $Trump Dinner in Washington in May 2025 is none other than former President Trump's longtime friend, Bill Zanker. Bill Zanker is the authorized person of Fight Fight Fight LLC, the company behind the $Trump token, which, along with CIC Digital LLC, collectively owns 80% of the meme coin linked to Trump, valued at billions of dollars.

Bill Zanker with Trump

CIC Digital LLC was founded in 2021 by one of Trump's lawyers, John Marion, and former advisor Nick Luna. As a subsidiary of the Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC collaborates with Fight Fight Fight LLC to operate the $TRUMP token website and derive transaction revenue from it.

CIC Digital LLC is responsible for licensing Trump's name and likeness for Trump Digital Trading Cards and other NFT projects. Bill Zanker is considered a key driver of the Trump NFT projects. Reportedly, in 2022, Bill Zanker proposed the NFT series to Trump and met with him at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club to discuss the project's feasibility. CIC Digital LLC licensed Trump's brand to NFT INT LLC, a Delaware-registered company, with Zanker playing an organizing and promotional role, despite not directly owning NFT INT LLC.

This is not the first collaboration between the two parties, as Magic Eden, a prominent NFT platform, has previously collaborated with the Trump Digital Trading Cards project. In March 2024, the Trump Card NFT project announced its migration to Magic Eden, stating that Magic Eden "has established a dedicated team to assist users in managing their Trump digital card collections."

And this is not the first time the two have collaborated. Since around 2000, after the two met and worked together many times, Bill Zanker initially founded The Learning Annex education company with the goal of turning it into the "McDonald's of the education world." The company was founded by Zanker in a $5,000 New York City studio apartment in 1980 and grew rapidly, with revenue exceeding $100 million at one point. Celebrities who gave advice in the courses included motivational speaker Tony Robbins, former boxer George Foreman, and Trump. Trump's speech for the Learning Annex in 2002 was titled "Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life!" Zanker claimed to pay Trump $1.5 million for each appearance, but Trump later admitted it was actually only $400,000.

Then in 2007, the two collaborated on writing "Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life." In addition to this, the two also co-founded the ill-fated crowdfunding website FundAnything in 2013. The website was started by Zanker with his own $1 million, but a year later, Trump distanced himself from the project, only tweeting a few dozen times, saying, "Raising this money took too much of my time and energy," and the project eventually fizzled out. It wasn't until 2022 that Bill Zanker proposed the commercial concept of "Trump NFT," leading to their ongoing collaboration in the cryptocurrency space.

Bill Zanker and Trump Promote Co-Authored Book "Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life"

The statement on $Trump's official website reads: "TRUMP" is a registered trademark of DTTM Operations LLC. This product is not distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization, or any of their respective affiliates or principals. DTTM Operations LLC is a New York registered limited liability company established in 2015, active in various fields such as real estate, hotels, entertainment, clothing, and political services, holding a large number of trademarks related to the Trump brand, with records showing at least 137 trademarks.

DTTM Operations LLC also holds the trademark for "THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION," and the copyright for $Trump is not provided by Eric Trump's THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION under "IP support," but rather from the IP ownership obtained from DTTM Operations LLC.

Although Trump claimed during his presidency to hand over daily business operations to his children (such as Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump), DTTM Operations LLC is still widely seen as the entity that protects and manages Trump-related assets.

In addition to Bill Zanker, the driving force behind $Trump is believed by the community to include the participation of David Sacks, the chair of the Crypto Council. David Sacks is well known as one of the founders of PayPal and gained fame by creating Yammer and selling it to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. In the crypto world, David Sacks's most important roles are as an investor in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin and a Solana maximalist.

"One of the dumbest attacks against me this year is to say that I dumped SOL tokens on retail investors. If that were true, they should be swimming in profits now. Congratulations to everyone holding SOL," even when FTX went bust, Sacks never sold SOL.

As $Trump is deployed on the Solana blockchain, and when Trump launched the $TRUMP coin, David Sacks remained silent on these "zero-sum meme coins." Therefore, many believe that this chair of the Crypto Council and member of the PayPal Mafia most likely participated in it.

Further reading: "Silicon Valley Turns Right: Peter Thiel, A16Z, and the Political Ambitions of Cryptocurrency"

Within a few days of $Trump's launch, Trump's wife Melania's namesake $MELANIA was also launched. Messari founder Ryan Selkis tweeted calling on Trump to fire the individuals behind the $MELANIA project. "The project team lacks professionalism, could cause significant financial and reputational damage, and the project decisions did not adequately consider Trump's interests." Selkis pointed out the issues with $MELANIA.

Compared to the issuance of $TRUMP coin, the issuance of $MELANIA was more hasty. The front-end code was incomplete, images were not compressed, the website was only built the day before the project was released, and the legal text was not precise. Many netizens speculated that there were many differences in the approach between $MELANIA and $TRUMP, suggesting that they may not be operated by the same team.

More than one community member disclosed, "If my source is correct, $TRUMP was driven by crypto tsar David Sacks, while $MELANIA was done by the Worldliberty team. However, it can be affirmed that these two coins were not created by the same team."

WLFI "Interest Group," Middle East Envoys Father-Son Duo

History always has astonishing similarities, just like the last time $Trump and $MELANIA had a "scheduling conflict." After this collaboration between MagicEden and $Trump for a crypto wallet, Trump's eldest son stated that WLFI will launch its official wallet. However, applications like the "Trump Wallet" are not like Memecoins. There can only be one Trump-themed wallet app, leading to today's "Monkey King" mix-up.

Eric Trump further escalated the dispute by sending a series of text messages to The New York Times, stating that the Trump family will legally challenge the "TRUMP Wallet," even though the wallet was promoted on social media by an account associated with Bill Zanker, also part of the "Trump Interest Group." "This product has not reached any agreement," Eric Trump wrote. "This product has not received approval yet."

WLFI was established on September 16, 2024, when then President-elect Donald Trump announced his move to X. The company was founded by real estate mogul Steve Witkoff and his son Zach Witkoff. Trump's sons EricTrump and DonaldJTrumpJr also participated as team members in the project.

Justin Sun (left), Zach Witkoff (center), Eric Trump (right), son of Donald Trump, attending the Token2049 cryptocurrency conference in Dubai

At a conference in Dubai, Zach Witkoff, son of Witkoff and co-founder of the crypto company World Liberty Financial, announced that the company had reached an agreement with Tahnoon's company to purchase $2 billion worth of USD1 stablecoin issued by World Liberty. The Witkoff father and son, along with the Trump family, are expected to receive tens of millions of dollars in annual profits, with the Trump family holding a 60% stake in World Liberty Financial.

Since last fall, the Trump family has embarked on several different cryptocurrency projects, including American Bitcoin, $TRUMP, $MELANIA, World Liberty Financial, and Trump Media & Technology Group. Recently, the Trump family's involvement in the crypto business has not slowed down. In addition to today's drama of a fake "wallet," Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, has submitted a Bitcoin ETF application. Meanwhile, the official Meme coin $MELANIA associated with the former First Lady has reached a liquidity providing agreement with Wintermute, and WLFI has airdropped 47 USD1 tokens to its subscribers' addresses, indicating that the stablecoin race is also gaining traction.

At this point in time, the team behind $Trump, which has used up its benefits and can no longer draw liquidity from the market, and the Trump NFT project seem to be gradually moving away from the core circle of the "Trump Group."

In 2025, Crypto belongs to the Trump family.

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