Former first lady Melania Trump announced plans on Thursday to launch her new NFT digital art work collection which is inspired by her husband’s time in presidential office.
The announcement comes after accusations made by a supporting cryptocurrency firm which indicated that someone using an address linked to the Trumps had in fact purchased an item previously listed for sale by Melania for $270,000 – spurring the claim that the Trumps had bought the item themselves.
The new collection entitled ‘POTUS TRUMP NFT’ includes 10,000 items from Donald Trump’s presidency and will go on sale to the public on February 21st – Presidents’ Day.
NFTs or non-fungible tokens are a form of cryptocurrency which can be exchanged with real money to pay for digital goods like music, videos or photos. Each NFT represents an item.
In real-world money, each piece in Melania’s collection will be priced at $50 and the range includes various iconic moments includes Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore, Christmas at the White House and Air Force One – but buyers won’t know what their item is until they’ve paid.
Items will be tiered into platinum and gold levels.
According to a statement made by her office, the glamourous former first lady provided “creative direction” for the collection, and Melania said she was “proud to expand upon my NFT platform and am honored to be able to recognize important moments in our nation’s history.
“I look forward to collaborating with others to offer truly special, authentic parts of U.S. history.”
Official POTUS TRUMP NFT Collection // Launching Presidents Day pic.twitter.com/fHht5vQesL
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) February 17, 2022
The auction will be launched on the Solana protocol – a Blockchain system supporting cryptocurrency sales which is very difficult for hackers or viruses to penetrate.
Pro-free speech social media platform Parler will be “powering the platform”.
Melania, who is a successful businesswoman in her own right, first began to delve into the world of cryptocurrency and NFTs in December last year when she launched a website selling digital content and auctioning physical pieces.
She came under fire when addresses listed on her website revealed that the winning bid of around $170,000 for the Head of State 2022 collection – which included a Melania’s hat worn during a state visit from French President Macron and a watercolour of her wearing it – was in fact made by an account with the same address linked to the website.
According to digital analysis from MotherBoard, the winning bidder then sent the 1800 SOL cryptocurrency back to the auction website.
“In other words, the winner of Melania Trump’s NFT got the money from none other than the creator of the NFT itself, and an address linked to the NFT creator got the money back”, said a digital analyser.
Despite the commotion created by the press, Trump’s office confirmed that the arrangement had been made with an outside buyer, reminding skeptics that “the nature of Blockchain protocol is entirely transparent” and nothing was hidden.
“Accordingly, the public can view each transaction on the Blockchain. The transaction was facilitated on behalf of a third-party buyer,” it concluded.
This may be because the buyer wanted to pay in real money rather than cryptocurrency, and an arrangement was made between parties.
Don’t forget to look out for Melania’s new POTUS TRUMP NFT collection, which will launch February 21st.
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News