Donald Trump's 'infamous' tweets are being sold as NFTs by a group of students

A group of college students are selling many of former US President Donald Trump’s popular tweets as nonfungible tokens (NFT) and donating the proceeds to charities. According to The Hill, Theodore Horn, Jackie Ni and Jason Yu had set up a website called ‘Drumpfs’ in April as part of a larger company called Strategic Meme Group (SMG). the group revealed that the name of their website came from a meme “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver started in 2016 during Trump’s first presidential campaign. 

Jackie Ni said that a lot of Trump’s tweets are actually “really funny”. Ni added that his tweets have also been historically known to be “hateful and inciting violence". Therefore, “we tried to do something good with his tweets,” the 18-year-old added. 

The group informed that the tweets are divided into different categories, including “infamous,” “deleted” and “flagged”. They are also divided chronologically, dating back from before Trump was elected president through his last post on January 8 before he was permanently banned from the social media platform. 

According to reports, Trump’s last post, declaring that he “will not be going to the Inauguration,” is among a group of 100 “infamous” tweets that are for sale at a higher price of about $12,232. All other tweets, on the other hand, are selling for about $63.28. Each NFT of the tweets also contains corresponding graphic art, the group said. 

$6,000 raised since launch 

Ni revealed that he thought of the idea of creating the NFTs of Trump’s tweet after seeing the rise in popularity of the digital assets. He said that since launching the initiative this week, the group has raised $6,000 in sales. Further, the college students also put thought behind where to donate the funds, with specific charities chosen based on the content of Trump’s tweet. For example, the group said that the proceeds of Trump’s post about “Fake news” will be donated to the “American Journalism Project”. 

However, some of the former President’s tweets that are harder to categorised - like the infamous 2012 tweet where Trump weighed in on celebrity couple Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson’s relationship - are labelled with a note saying the money will go toward the “general fund”. Ni said that there will also be a voting system in place for people to choose charities to benefit from the general fund purchases. He said that the group will start sending out donation to the charities when it reaches $1,000 as it is “quite a hassle” to convert between the cryptocurrency the NFTs are purchased with and US dollars. 

(Image: Unsplash/AP)