Donald Trump Adds Bitcoin Ordinals as Incentive Amid Flagging NFT Sales

In an effort to secure funding for his re-election campaign, former US President Donald Trump is set to launch a new collection of NFTs that will be issued on the number one blockchain using Ordinals inscriptions.

A tweet from the Collect Trump Card account, which has previously popularized Trump-related projects, said that 200 cards featuring images from the Trump MugShot collection will be minted on the Bitcoin blockchain, and then they will go on sale on Magic Eden at an unknown date.

According to the Collect Trump Cards website, 100 NFTs must be purchased with Wrapped Ethereum. Wrapped tokens are digital assets that allow the value of a native asset, such as Bitcoin or in this case, Ethereum, to be transferred from one blockchain to another.

To help increase sales, the organizers launched a promotion - the first two hundred people who purchase 100 Trump NFTs in one transaction will receive the inscription “one of one” after the token is created. Also, those who purchase 100 NFTs will be able to receive two VIP tickets to an event hosted by Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

"All Trump Digital Trading Cards: MugShot Edition are non-tradable until December 31, 2024," Collect Trump Cards said in a statement. "Join the Trump Cards Collecting Community!"

At the time of publishing this article, just under half of the NFTs in this latest batch have been released, according to OpenSea.

The Ordinals collection is just the latest in the former president's attempt to create a digital collection. In December, the MugShot Edition collection of 100,000 NFTs appeared on the Polygon network.

Later that month, Trump sold 1,075 ETH, which was worth about $2.4 million at the time, according to blockchain company Arkham.

The Collect Trump Card Twitter account was quick to argue that NFTs are purely for entertainment purposes.

"Trump digital trading cards (NFTs) are intended as collectibles for personal use only and not as investment instruments," the account said in a post. "These digital trading cards are not propaganda and have nothing to do with any political campaign."