Memecoin taxes and NFT royalties are paying off for Trump

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Passive crypto income

Say what you will about Trump. He (or his team) have figured out passive crypto income.

Vending machines, rental properties and affiliate marketing are usually the strategies of choice for passive income influencers.

Trump, instead, is benefitting bigly from two distinct onchain phenomena: secondary NFT sales and, increasingly, token taxes paid by unofficial memecoins.

Over the weekend, we got an eye into Trump’s finances: $635 million in assets, hundreds of millions of dollars revenue from properties including Mar-a-Lago and various golf courses, and millions of dollars in royalties.

Part of those royalties were $7.2 million in licensing fees from NFT INT LLC, the company which licensed Trump’s likeness for the official Trump Digital Trading Card NFT collections on Polygon.

Much of Trump’s assets are meanwhile in US Treasurys and other bonds, index funds and stocks, as well as 114.75 million shares in his media company DJT, currently worth $2.65 billion. Those shares will be tradable in September, after a six-month lock-up period expires.

And then there’s a disclosure of between $1 million and $5 million ether, as well as between $100,000 and $250,000 in gold bars (Arkham Intelligence puts Trump’s ether holdings at $1.28 million with an additional $976,000 in WETH). 

What isn’t represented granularly in the disclosure is that Trump’s crypto wallets (particularly on Ethereum and Polygon) are currently raking in tens of thousands of dollars every month through no continued effort of Trump’s team.

Blockchain data shows that Trump’s first three NFT collections altogether brought in up to 1,237 ETH in their respective first weeks, which would account for the initial drops. Based on the daily value of ETH, those sales would’ve brought in $2.14 million to Trump’s Polygon wallet, but the same amount of crypto would fetch almost $3.2 million today.

This chart shows the price of ether against Trump’s onchain passive income: purple plusses for NFT revenue, pink diamonds for memecoin taxes

Trump Digital Trading Cards also carry a 10% royalty fee for secondary sales, and Trump’s Polygon wallet has received an additional 782.32 ETH ($2 million) outside of the initial collection sales, going back to January 2023. Perfectly decent passive income from Trump NFT traders.

But that NFT revenue is drying up and will likely continue to do so until we see a fourth drop (which Trump has hinted at). Trump’s wallet earns a few hundred dollars at best per day from NFT trades right now and often under $10.

Luckily, a raft of illegitimate memecoins on Ethereum are paying a steady stream of ether to Trump’s Ethereum wallet, as shown on the chart above.

Save America, Trump Bucks and a few different ‘Trump Fund’ coins pay a 2% auto-tax to Trump on every transfer, and so far, those token contracts have paid over 5,100 individual donations.

The donations are fractions of an ETH each, but they do add up: 137.3 ETH in the past four months, or $354,000 at current prices. Over the same period, NFT royalties have earned Trump’s wallet about 4.5 ETH ($11,600).

Now let’s wait to see if Trump discloses unofficial memecoin tax revenue on his next disclosure. That would be true adoption.

— David Canellis

Data Center

• Floor prices for Trump Digital Trading Cards are up 47% since the weekend to $289.30. That’s still 60% below floor prices three months ago.
• Solana and Ethereum are neck-and-neck for daily DEX volume, $729.85 million to $702.61 million. Ethereum still leads over the week with $8.48 billion.
• On Friday, we asked if you thought crypto airdrops were fair. 50% of you who responded said “free crypto is free crypto.” Only one agreed that they’re fair. 
• BTC is trading around $58,000, down over 2.5% in the last 24 hours. ETH’s holding on to $2,500, slipping only 2%. 
• TRX, XMR and XRP are leading the gainers Monday morning, while HNT, KAS and SEI are lagging behind the market, losing between 8% and 6%. 

That don’t impress me much

Would you like the good news or the bad news first? 

We’re starting the week off on a bit of a weaker foot, with bitcoin sub $60,000 and the overall market cap losing roughly 3% in the past 24 hours. Memecoin WIF is trailing the market, down about 22% in the past seven days per CoinGecko. 

Though FalconX’s David Lawant noted that TON remains a strong outperformer.

“The ETH/BTC ratio slightly recovered but it remains at low 0.045, not far from its three-year lows. Turnover shrunk from the elevated levels seen over the past couple of weeks but is still slightly above the averages seen in June and July,” Lawant wrote.

Source: FalconX

Outside of the general market though, Lawant looked at the current correlation between bitcoin and the presidential election, given that we’re only a few months out (wow time flies). 

Current Polymarket odds give Democratic nominee Kamala Harris a 51% chance of winning, with Trump trailing behind slightly at 47%. The market is worth over $640 million.

But, despite all of the chatter around the election and crypto’s role in a new administration, Lawant pointed out that there really isn’t a discernible trend between the November election and bitcoin’s price. It’s still, when you look closely, it’s more tied to the stock market (though it’s trailing benchmarks at the moment). 

Trump, back in July, took the lead as bettors backed the former president in his reelection campaign following his assassination attempt. But, as we all know by now, the entire situation has changed, including the candidates. 

Anyway, Lawant plotted out the odds in a dot plot, seen below.

Source: FalconX

From the first of June to the end of last week, there isn’t yet a correlation between the odds and bitcoin’s reaction, as seen by the dots representing the momentum from Republicans and, conversely, the Democrats catching up. That’s not to say there isn’t still time though. 

“A strong relationship between Republican win odds and BTC prices would look like an upward-sloping line with a 45-degree angle. Conversely, a strong relationship between BTC prices and a Democrat win would look like a downward-sloping line with the same 45-degree angle. We can only identify a fuzzy cloud instead,” Lawant wrote.

Policy and a new potential approach to regulation are on the line in November, depending on who you listen to. But it doesn’t seem like that’s enough to force a market movement just yet. And, honestly, perhaps that’s for the best. 

— Katherine Ross

The Works

• Franklin Templeton filed to launch a crypto index ETF that would hold both ETH and BTC.
• The TON ecosystem welcomed a new partnership: HashKey Group announced a collaboration with Telegram game Catizen. 
• Shaquille O’Neal’s Astral NFT case received a partial dismissal, meaning the former NBA star will still have to proceed with part of the case.
• BlackRock’s ETFs hold more bitcoin and ether than Grayscale’s funds. 
• Bernstein analysts said that there’s growing investor interest in the pivot to AI from bitcoin miners.

The Riff

Q: What would you like to see from a pro-crypto president?

Easy answers would be stuff like holding all the bitcoin seized from criminals as a treasury reserve asset — like what has already been proposed. 

Adding onto that: The US government is sitting on $130 million in ether, which was seized from a variety of cases. 

A truly pro-crypto president would stake that ETH and earn a yield — over $4 million per year at current prices — and direct that revenue toward something useful, preferably at the local level.

But considering there’s almost $12 billion in bitcoin sitting alongside those ETH coffers, it feels like doing something with it, apart from simply selling it on Coinbase, is probably the most tangible net good for “crypto.”

And if government contractors and vendors simply won’t accept bitcoin — at least swap it for USDC and encourage them to accept stablecoins instead. 

A “crypto for payments president” might be just the thing we need.

— David Canellis

Actual policy. 

I’m a big fan of people putting action behind their words, and would prefer to see some real substance before I jump in the boat of anyone in the White House being pro-crypto. 

The appointments out of the Trump campaign last week, where they announced Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick (who’s seen as pro-crypto, specifically pro-Tether), could be interpreted as action, but that’s not really what I mean. 

When actual policy (and not just promises) is announced and legislation is encouraged, then perhaps someone can actually call themselves a pro-crypto president. But right now there’s just a lot of talk from both sides.  

We’ve got 78 days until the election though, so anything could change.

— Katherine Ross