This morning, MagicEden announced a collaboration with $Trump to launch the Trump Wallet. Upon the announcement, the market value of MagicEden's $ME token rose nearly 30% from 850 million USD to 1.1 billion USD within two hours. However, soon after, Eric Trump, Donald J. Trump Jr., and Barron Trump, who had not previously posted on X, all issued statements denying any connection to the announcement.

Eric even posted twice, warning MagicEden: "I will be very cautious about using our name in projects that are unauthorized and unknown to our organization." With the "denial actions" by Trump's sons, the market value of $ME dropped to 960 million USD and currently fluctuates around 1 billion USD.

Announced in Seconds, Denied in Seconds: What Exactly is the 'Trump Wallet'?

The news initially surfaced at 12:10 AM (UTC+8) this morning when software engineer and crypto researcher Molly White first revealed on X that "Trump will launch a brand new crypto wallet and trading application." She discovered related domain names and website information for TrumpWallet.com and pointed out that the website was already live before the official announcement, offering a waiting list registration and promotional information for $TRUMP token rewards. Bitcoin Magazine later covered the event as well.

An hour later at 1:35 AM, MagicEden officially announced its collaboration with $TRUMP to build @TrumpWalletApp. After announcing the news on their main account, many team members shared it widely. Jack, co-founder and CEO of MagicEden, tweeted: "Sign up for our waiting list immediately! Once the app launches, there will be a $1 million $TRUMP reward. Users who refer at least one person will have a chance to win a $100,000 prize." With the "referral campaign" launched, invitation codes for TrumpWalletApp spread rapidly within the community.

An hour later at 2:21 AM, Eric Trump posted on X stating, "I run the Trump Organization, but I am completely unaware of this project," tagging WLFI and his own stake in AmericanBTC as well as the "main character" $Trump. Subsequently, family members including DonaldJTrumpJr and Barron Trump, along with numerous WLFI team members, re-shared and opposed the action.

Although multiple "WLFI members" opposed it, both the TrumpMeme official account and MagicEden team members confirmed it, leaving people confused. Currently, the original X account of Trump Wallet has been banned by Twitter, and before that, it belonged to the MagicEden gold standard account. From the official website information, the privacy policy and terms and conditions or "promotional activities" are managed by Slingshot Finance, which was acquired by MagicEden two months ago.

The Two "Factions" of the Trump Crypto Group

This is not the first time the Trump team has shown instability. During the previous presidential term, internal power struggles and personnel changes among the Trump administration were significant, with resignations being commonplace. In this term, with the focus on cryptocurrency, the teams involved became more fragmented, as everyone wanted to "take a share."

Meme Coin Issuer, Long-Time Business Partner of Trump

Interestingly, from Jack, the CEO of MagicEden, it can be seen that he recently attended a dinner with the founder of Slingshot, which was mentioned earlier and had been acquired, and this tweet was also retweeted by the official $Trump meme account. On June 3rd, TRUMP Meme officially stated that users who participated in the "dinner with Trump" activity would receive three different Solana NFTs in their wallets. Looking back now, it seems to have been a form of pre-launch for the "Trump Wallet App."

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

The person who organized the $Trump dinner in Washington in May 2025 was Bill Zanker, a long-time friend of President Trump. Bill Zanker is an authorized person of Fight Fight Fight LLC, the company behind the $Trump token. This company jointly owns 80% of the $TRUMP memecoin tokens with CIC Digital LLC, valued in the billions of dollars.

Bill Zanker and Trump's photo

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

CIC Digital LLC is responsible for authorizing the use of Trump's name and likeness in NFT projects such as Trump Digital Trading Cards. Bill Zanker is considered a key driver of Trump's NFT projects. According to reports, Bill Zanker proposed the NFT series to Trump in 2022 and met with him at his Mar-a-Lago club to discuss the feasibility of the project. CIC Digital LLC licensed the Trump brand to NFT INT LLC (a Delaware-registered company), and Zanker played an organizational and promotional role in the process, although he did not directly own NFT INT LLC.

And they are not strangers to each other. Magic Eden, a well-known 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."

This is not the first time the two have collaborated. Since they met around the year 2000, they have worked together multiple times. Initially, Bill Zanker founded The Learning Annex educational company, hoping to turn it into the "McDonald's of education." The company was founded by Zanker in a single apartment in New York in 1980 with $5,000, and it grew rapidly, with revenue reaching over $100 million. Celebrities who gave advice in courses included motivational speaker Tony Robbins, former boxer George Foreman, and Trump. Trump delivered a speech titled "Thinking Big: Nothing Is Impossible" for The Learning Annex in 2002. Zanker claimed he paid Trump $1.5 million per appearance, but Trump later admitted it was actually only $400,000.

Later, in 2007, the two collaborated on writing "Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life." Additionally, they co-founded the troubled crowdfunding site FundAnything in 2013, which Zanker started with his own $1 million. However, a year later, Trump distanced himself from the project, posting only dozens of tweets and stating, "It took me too much time and effort to raise this money," and the project eventually failed. It wasn't until 2022 that Bill Zanker proposed the "Trump NFT" business concept, and the two have been collaborating in the cryptocurrency field since then.

Bill Zanker and Trump promoting their co-authored book "Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life"

The official website of $Trump states that "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 its affiliated companies or officers. DTTM Operations LLC is a limited liability company based in New York, established in 2015, active in real estate, hotels, entertainment, fashion, political services, and other fields, holding a large number of trademarks related to the Trump brand, with at least 137 trademarks recorded.

DTTM Operations LLC also holds the trademark for "THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION," and the copyright registration for $Trump is not provided by THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION led by Eric Trump, but rather obtained from DTTM Operations LLC.

Although Trump claimed during his presidency that he handed daily operations to his children (such as Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump), DTTM Operations LLC is generally regarded as the entity that protects and manages Trump-related assets.

In addition to Bill Zanker, the community believes that David Sacks, the chairman of the crypto committee, is also involved in the $Trump project. David Sacks is well known as one of the founders of PayPal, and later gained fame by creating Yammer and selling it to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. In the crypto world, David Sacks's most important identity is as an investor in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin and as a major supporter of Solana.

"One of the stupidest attacks on me this year is claiming that I sold SOL tokens to retail investors. If that were true, they should have made a fortune by now. Congratulations to everyone holding SOL." Even during the FTX collapse, Sacks never sold SOL.

Since $Trump is deployed on the Solana chain, and when Trump issued the $TRUMP coin, David Sacks remained silent on these "zero-sum meme coins," leading many to believe that the chairman of the crypto committee and member of the PayPal Mafia likely participated in it.

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

Within days of $Trump, Melania Trump's namesake $MELANIA was also launched. Ryan Selkis, founder of Messari, sent a tweet urging Trump to fire the relevant personnel who recommended the $MELANIA project. "The project team lacks professional capabilities, could cause significant financial losses and damage to reputation, and project decisions did not fully consider Trump's interests," Selkis pointed out the issues with $MELANIA.

Compared to $TRUMP, the launch of $MELANIA was more hasty, with incomplete front-end code, unoptimized images, and the website built only a day before the project's release. Legal texts were also not rigorous. Many netizens speculate that $MELANIA and $TRUMP have many differences in their methods, possibly not operated by the same team.

Several community members have exposed that "if my sources are correct, $TRUMP was driven by crypto czar David Sacks, while $MELANIA was done by Worldliberty team. But it is certain that these two coins were not created by the same team."

WLFI "Interest Group," Father and Son Take the Stage

History is surprisingly similar. Just like the previous situation where $Trump and $MELANIA "overlapped in timing." After MagicEden's collaboration with $Trump on the crypto wallet, Trump's eldest son stated that WLFI would launch its own official wallet. However, unlike Memecoins, there can only be one Trump-themed wallet app, which led to today's "false and true monkey king" misunderstanding.

Eric Trump sent a series of text messages to The New York Times, further escalating the dispute, claiming that the Trump family will take legal action against the "$TRUMP Wallet," despite the fact that the wallet was promoted by an account related to Bill Zanker, who is part of the same "Trump interest group." "This product has not reached any agreement," Eric Trump wrote, "this product has not reached any agreement. It has not yet been approved."

WLFI was founded on September 16, 2024, when the elected president Donald Trump announced his entry into X. The company was founded by real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff and his son Zach Witkoff, with Trump's son EricTrump and DonaldJTrumpJr also participating as team members.

Justin Sun (left), Zach Witkoff (middle), and Trump's second son Eric Trump (right) attended the Token2049 cryptocurrency conference in Dubai

Zach Witkoff, son of Witkoff and co-founder of the crypto company World Liberty Financial, announced at a meeting in Dubai that the company had reached an agreement with Tahnoon's enterprise to purchase USD1, a stablecoin issued by World Liberty, worth $2 billion. The Witkoff family and the Trump family are expected to receive millions of dollars in annual profits. "The Trump family holds 60% of the shares in World Liberty Financial."

Since last autumn, the Trump family has initiated multiple different cryptocurrency projects, including American Bitcoin, $TRUMP, $MELANIA, World Liberty Financial, and Trump Media & Technology Group. Recently, the Trump family's related crypto businesses have not stopped. Apart from today's confusion over "wallets," Truth Social, Trump's social platform, submitted a Bitcoin ETF application, and the official meme coin $MELANIA of Trump's wife has reached a liquidity provision agreement with Wintermute. WLFI also air-dropped 47 USD1 to its token holders' addresses, indicating that the stablecoin sector is gradually taking shape.

At this point, the teams behind $Trump and Trump NFT, who have exhausted the positive news and can no longer draw liquidity from the market, seem to be gradually moving away from the core circle of the "Trump Organization."

2025's Crypto is Trump Family's Crypto.