Trump's NFT collection gets $2 million despite slow market

Despite anemic non-fungible token (NFT) sales globally, former president Donald Trump has earned more than $2 million from his fourth collection of NFTs released this week.

Known as "Series 4: The America First Collection,” Trump’s latest digital collectibles are being sold at a price of $99 apiece. They feature Trump’s visage emblazoned on trading cards with titles like "SuperTrump," and "crypto president."

Trump has heavily promoted crypto in the weeks since he headlined the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. During the conference, Trump pledged to remove Gary Gensler, the current chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to rapturous applause from crypto executives.

"Bitcoin stands for freedom," he proclaimed. “We will have regulations, but from now on the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry,” he said.

This past week, collectors have bought fewer than 21,000 digital trading cards out of a potential pool of 360,000. Trump stands to earn $35.6 million total if all his trading cards are sold.

While the number of NFTs sold has been meager – amounting to only 5% of Trump’s total collection – some analysts have publicly pronounced the long-term value of Trump's NFTs effectively worthless , and are encouraging investors to dump the collection prior to November.

The slow sales are a sharp departure from the performance of Trump’s initial two NFT collections, which managed to sell out rapidly.

"Timing is important," wrote sports appraiser Michael Osacky. "Nobody is going to care or remember these cards come November. The time to sell is today.