On May 27, Trump Media and Technology Group, a publicly traded company in which the Trump family owns a majority stake, announced it had raised $2.5 billion to accumulate a bitcoin treasury. The deal puts the conglomerate in competition with a growing stable of bitcoin-accumulation stocks, which act as a substitute of sorts for investing in bitcoinamong them American Bitcoin, the crypto mining firm launched recently by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., which is pursuing a similar strategy.
The wallet conflict also underlines the inscrutability of the relationships and interplay between the Trump Organization, Trump Media and Technology Group, World Liberty Financial, American Bitcoin, Fight Fight Fight, and the Trump family.
The full ownership structure of Fight Fight Fight is obfuscated by layers of corporate filings unavailable to the public. The X posts by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday appear to allege that, as the leaders of the Trump Organization, they reserve the right to limit the companys use of their family name to the Trump memecoin.
Meanwhile, though World Liberty Financial has sought to underline its independence from Donald Trumps political affairsWere a private company having private-sector conversations, wrote World Liberty Financial cofounder Zak Folkman in a recent statementthe wallet dispute has underscored its entanglement with the presidents family brand. In his X post on Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr. appeared to present the crypto wallet soon to be issued by World Liberty Financial as the real Trump family wallet, as set against what he alleges is the unauthorized Trump-branded wallet backed by Magic Eden.
In cryptoland, confusion reigns: Not really sure whats real and whats not, says Tom, the pseudonymous leader of peer-to-peer crypto exchange Raydium.
In the wider crypto industry, the ease with which anybody can put any name to an undifferentiated crypto product has long created problems, claims Cory Klippsten, CEO at bitcoin services company Swan Bitcoin.
In crypto, its far too easy to spin up scams masquerading as innovation, alleges Klippsten, especially when you can hijack a brand and pump a token before anyone asks whos behind it.
