Was Melania Trump’s $170K NFT Bought By Melania Trump Herself?

Late last month, Melania Trump’s The Head of State Collection non-fungible token  reportedly sold for below its asking price of US$250,000 due to the cryptocurrency crash, raking in only US$170,000 in Solana tokens.

In an even odder twist, it now seems that the person who purchased the collection could be the former First Lady herself, or rather, whoever helped her launch the sale.

According to Artnet News, public records on the Solana blockchain showed that the auction’s winning bidder had the same digital address as the person who minted the collection, supposedly pointing to Trump. 

Interestingly, at the end of January, the buyer’s digital address received 1,800 SOL from an address funded by the address that minted the capsule.

Upon completion of the auction, the original address sent the tokens back to the self-funded address, which converted it into a stable coin linked to the US dollar. 

While that may seem complex, it all means that, as per the records viewed by Motherboard and verified by an independent researcher, the person who bought the NFT collection was the same person who set it up in the first place.

Trump’s office told the site that “the nature of Blockchain protocol is entirely transparent. Accordingly, the public can view each transaction on the blockchain. The transaction was facilitated on behalf of a third-party buyer,” though it didn’t specify if that buyer was indeed her.

Could the facilitator of the sale have come up with an incredibly complicated plan to fund an intermediary address just to purchase their own collection? And why did the original creator send the tokens back? We may never know.

[via Artnet News and Motherboard, cover image via MaciejGillert / Shutterstock.com]