'Did It for the Cute Art': Donald Trump on Releasing NFT Cards

Donald Trump, almost a week after launching his first ever NFT collection, has explained why he decided to dive into digital collectibles. In a recent interview, the former President of the US said that the images of him used on his NFT cards looked ‘sort of cute'. All 45,000 fantasy trading cards released as NFTs by Trump, display dramatic avatars of the controversial businessman that shows him as a super-human, astronaut, golf-player, and a boxer, among other versions.

Trump, in a recent review has claimed that pouring investment and churning profits was not on his list of reasons behind why he launched these NFTs. As per Forbes, Trump's net worth is estimated to be at around $3.2 billion (roughly Rs. 320 crore) — perhaps that explains why he released an NFT series despite the ongoing slump in the industry.

"I loved the art. I'm looking at this stuff and I'm saying, ‘that's sort of cute, that might sell.' It set like a record. It's been incredible,” Trump said in a recent interview with One America News.

A video of the same has also surfaced on Twitter.

All of Trump's NFTs are based on the Polygon blockchain. Each NFT is priced at $99 (roughly Rs. 8,200) that can be payable in Ether tokens as well as fiat currencies.

“Each Trump Digital Trading Card has a unique identifier that cannot be copied, is recorded on a blockchain, and can be used to certify authenticity as well as ownership. As a bonus for purchasers of Trump Digital Trading Cards, each NFT includes one entry into a sweepstakes to win one of thousands of amazing prizes,” the official website for Trump's NFTs had said at the time of launch.

The digital assets collection was released on December 16 and since then, Trump's NFT cards have been able to collect $9.6 million (roughly Rs. 80 crore), data tracker CryptoSlam showed.

This year has not particularly been a profitable one for the NFT sector.

In a recent report, Bloomberg said the sales of NFTs recorded a 16-month low following the downfall of the FTX crypto exchange citing DappRadar.

The NFT trading volumes have reportedly slid by 97 percent since January.

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