Author: Protos
Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow
In the past few days, a chaotic event involving Barron Trump, the Trump family, Peter Thiel, Martin Shkreli, Arkham, and many other participants has engulfed Crypto Twitter.
Here’s a summary of the entire event. The fuse
Initially, a “new media” platform Pirate Wires associated with Peter Thiel tweeted that “according to ‘some conversations,’ Barron Trump, the son of Donald Trump, will host the official Donald Trump token.” This message sparked suspicion and speculation because the only evidence at the time was a contract address randomly added by Pirate Wires’ Michael Solana.
As the liquidity of the token was low at the time, the release of the contract address increased skepticism about the project’s authenticity.
Martin Shkreli then joined the fray, tweeting that a Twitter account “looks like an official account,” but still did not provide any convincing evidence.
Martin Shkreli went on to create a Space called “$DJT is real,” claiming once again that the token was an official Trump coin introduced by Barron Trump, but still failed to provide any evidence. The truth gradually came to light
Shortly after, many KOL accounts began to spread the news that the official Trump token $DJT was indeed in existence.
Subsequently, Martin Shkreli and Bo Loudon (one of Barron Trump’s best friends) joined another Space where Bo Loudon stated that “Barron was indeed involved in this project,” but quickly changed to “this is a rumor, I heard it from another friend.”
Bo Loudon then deleted his tweet declaring that “$DJT is the only real Trump token.”
As public sentiment towards $DJT declined, Martin Shkreli became more active on Twitter, tweeting that Polymarket’s prediction market about “whether Trump himself is involved in DJT” would be “by definition” 100% likely to be “yes.”
Soon, Martin Shkreli’s tweets and discussions were almost entirely focused on the DJT token. A friendly wager?
After publicly claiming that the Trump family was involved in the DJT token, Martin Shkreli proposed a bet, stating his willingness to bet on the $DJT meme coin with anyone capable. Cryptocurrency investor Alex Wice then stated that if Martin Shkreli could provide funds, he would be willing to bet $1 million that $DJT was fake. Martin Shkreli responded, “I accept the bet, how high can you go?”
However, before the bet was finalized, a larger whale entered the fray: legendary trader GCR offered to bet $100 million with Martin Shkreli that Donald Trump was not involved with the token. Martin Shkreli eventually accepted the bet, replying, “Your move.”
However, despite the involvement of well-known cryptocurrency figures like Jordan Fish (@cobie), GCR and Martin Shkreli failed to reach a betting agreement, with no funds deposited, no formal wager, and no final victory or defeat. It was all just talk
The bet never materialized, but that didn’t stop Martin Shkreli from claiming victory and celebrating “the win” while stating that GCR had backed out. But as he celebrated the false victory, Arkham, an on-chain information tracking company, tweeted offering a $150,000 reward for the first person to definitively prove the creator of the $DJT token.
Within two hours, on-chain detective ZachXBT applied for the reward, which seemed to make Martin Shkreli somewhat panicked.
According to ZachXBT’s timeline thread, after he explicitly applied for the reward, Martin Shkreli panicked and directly messaged ZachXBT admitting to his involvement in creating $DJT.
Martin Shkreli then hosted another Space, publicly admitting for the first time that he had been involved in creating $DJT. The beginning of the farce
After failing to receive $100 million and being exposed as the token’s creator in a very embarrassing way, and with the “Trump family support” banner stripped away, Martin Shkreli took to Twitter again, spending nearly half a day desperately trying to convince anyone willing to listen that he had indeed created the token with Barron Trump.
If Martin Shkreli’s words are to be believed, the entire story went like this:
Martin Shkreli worked with a 17-year-old minor named Cameron, who had connections to Bo Louden and Barron Trump. It was said that Cameron contacted Barron and heard that Barron was interested in launching a Meme coin before his brother Donald Trump, Jr. They sought Martin Shkreli’s help.
Martin Shkreli used Chat-GPT and discussed with many influential people in Crypto how to create a good financial incentive and mechanism, wrote the code for the token, and finally had Barron Trump launch it.
The token remained dormant for a while as the three individuals tried to persuade many funds and investors to invest in the project. Martin Shkreli said it was hard to get anyone to commit to investing, but also claimed that Barron Trump told him that Donald Trump himself supported the concept.
Martin Shkreli insisted that he had almost no motivation to be involved and had hardly purchased any tokens, that he would not exploit teenagers, and never wanted his involvement to be exposed.
While these words may be true, it is hard to believe that Martin Shkreli never wanted his involvement in the project to be revealed, given that he had been steadfast about the token’s authenticity from the beginning and repeatedly hinted that he had spoken with insiders.
Martin Shkreli also claimed that Barron Trump was the one who leaked the project information to Pirate Wire first. But he also said that the information was leaked earlier than they had expected, as the project was not ready to go live.
As of the end of yesterday, Martin Shkreli himself was no longer sure whether Barron Trump would publicly confirm his involvement and was “very hesitant to claim that Donald Trump would discuss the token.”
