Author: Protos
Compiled by: TechFlow
Over the past few days, a chaotic saga involving Barron Trump, the Trump family, news outlets associated with Peter Thiel, Martin Shkreli, Arkham, and numerous other players has engulfed Crypto Twitter.
The following is a summary of the entire incident.
fuse
Initially, Pirate Wires, a “new media” platform associated with Peter Thiel, tweeted that “according to ‘some conversations’, Trump’s son Barron Trump will host the official Donald Trump token.” This news caused suspicion and speculation because the only evidence at the moment was a contract address randomly added by Michael Solana, the head of Pirate Wires.
Since the liquidity of the token was very low at the time, people’s doubts about the authenticity of the project increased instead of decreasing after the contract address was released.
Martin Shkreli then joined in on the fun by tweeting that a Twitter account "looks like an official account," but again did not provide any convincing evidence.
Martin Shkreli then created a Space called “$DJT is real”, again claiming that the token was the official Trump coin launched by Barron Trump, but again without providing any evidence.
The truth gradually surfaced
Soon after, many KOL accounts began to spread the news that Trump’s official token $DJT was indeed a thing.
Later, Martin Shkreli and Bo Loudon (one of Barron Trump’s best friends) joined another Space. Bo Loudon said in Space that “Barron was indeed partially involved in this project” but he quickly changed his words and said “This is a rumor. I heard it from another friend.”
Bo Loudon then deleted his tweet which read “$DJT is the only real Trump coin.”
As sentiment towards $DJT waned, Martin Shkreli became more active on Twitter, tweeting that the Polymarket prediction market bet on whether Trump himself would participate in DJT would be judged as 100% "yes" "by definition".
Soon, Martin Shkreli’s tweets and discussions were almost entirely centered around the DJT token.
Want to take a gamble?
Martin Shkreli made another bet after publicly announcing the Trump family's involvement in the DJT token, saying he was willing to bet with anyone with the power on the $DJT meme coin. Then cryptocurrency investor Alex Wice said that if Martin Shkreli could escrow the funds, he would be willing to bet $1 million that $DJT was fake. Martin Shkreli said: "Accept the bet, how high can you bid?"
But before the bet was made, a bigger whale intervened: legendary trader GCR offered to bet with Martin Shkreli $100 million that Donald Trump had nothing to do with the token. Martin Shkreli finally agreed to the bet and replied: "It's your way."
However, even with the involvement of a well-known cryptocurrency figure like Jordan Fish (@cobie), GCR and Martin Shkreli were unable to reach a bet agreement, no funds were held in escrow, no formal bet was made, and no final winner or loser was made.
All talk is empty talk
The fact that the bet was not established did not prevent Martin Shkreli from claiming that he had won the bet and celebrating his "victory" while saying that GCR had withdrawn. But just as he was celebrating this fake victory, the on-chain information tracking company Arkham tweeted that it would offer a $150,000 reward to the first person who could clearly prove the creator of the $DJT token.
In less than two hours, on-chain detective ZachXBT filed a bounty application for the reward, which seemed to make Martin Shkreli a little panicked.
According to the time thread published by ZachXBT, after he clearly submitted his bounty application, Martin Shkreli panicked and sent a direct message to ZachXBT, saying that he participated in the creation of $DJT.
Martin Shkreli then convened a Space again and publicly acknowledged for the first time his involvement in and creation of $DJT.
The beginning of the farce
After failing to get $100 million, being revealed as the founder of the token in an extremely embarrassing way, and tearing off the banner of "Trump family support", Martin Shkreli spoke out on Twitter again, spending nearly half a day in multiple Spaces desperately trying to convince anyone who would listen that he did create this token with Barron Trump.
If Martin Shkreli's words are to be believed, the full story goes like this:
Martin Shkreli worked with a 17-year-old minor named Cameron who was connected to Bo Louden and Barron Trump. Cameron allegedly contacted Barron and heard that Barron was interested in launching a meme coin before his brother Donald Trump, Jr. They asked Martin Shkreli for help.
Martin Shkreli used Chat-GPT and discussed with many influential people in Crypto how to create good financial incentives and mechanisms. Martin Shkreli wrote the code for this token, and finally Barron Trump launched it.
The token has been quiet for a while as the three people associated with it are trying to convince various funds and investors to inject money into the project. Martin Shkreli said it was difficult to get anyone to commit to investing, but also said that Barron Trump told him that Donald Trump himself supports the concept.
Martin Shkreli insisted that he had little motivation to participate, purchased almost no tokens, would never take advantage of teenagers aged 17 or 18, and never wanted his involvement to be revealed.
While these statements may be true, it is hard to believe that Martin Shkreli himself never wanted to be exposed for his involvement in the project. After all, he was adamant about the authenticity of the token from the beginning and repeatedly hinted that he had spoken to insiders.
Martin Shkreli also claimed that it was Barron Trump who initially leaked the project information to Pirate Wire. But he also said that the information was leaked earlier than they expected and the project was not ready to go online.
By the end of yesterday, Martin Shkreli himself was no longer sure Barron Trump would publicly confirm his involvement and was “very hesitant to claim Donald Trump would talk about this token.