On Thursday, former U.S. President Donald Trump released a 45,000-piece series of $99-apiece NFTs following long-awaited hints that a “major announcement” would be forthcoming. 

Many people had assumed the announcement would relate to Trump’s recently declared 2024 presidential campaign, but here we are. 

The NFT "trading cards" feature digital renderings of Trump in a variety of kitschy getups, including cowboy dusters and astronaut suits, which Trump described as “scenes pertaining to my life” in a promotional video.

Donald Trump Now Has an NFT Collection—And Crypto Twitter 'Can’t Even'

According to the website, the proceeds from the launch—already “sold out!”—will “have nothing to do” with financing the Trump campaign. They are but humble collectors’ items, he tells us, a “great Christmas gift” that will enter buyers into a raffle for a number of prizes, including dinner with Trump, a Zoom call with Trump, autographed memorabilia and "so much more.” 

It’s all run by an obscure crypto company called NFT INT LLC that paid Trump for the branding and is at the center of a typically opaque web of shell companies, and, obviously, there are already suggestions he stole the artwork. Even MAGA Republicans have already gone on record saying they would never buy the cards, many presumably still focused on the FTX fallout, suggesting great—just the best—timing on the part of Trump. 

The launch process itself has also been the usual high comedy Trumpian clusterfuck. Not long after the tokens went on sale, reaching $1.17 million in trading volume in the first 24 hours, buyers began complaining about onerous checkout experiences, then noted that the NFTs were sent to a newly created wallet, different from the buyer's primary wallet. 

“They minted them all to the wrong addresses lol,” one observer guffawed.

Crypto analyst Eric Wall, who bought a card, eventually appeared to figure it out after a period of bemused wrangling, tweeting that to access the wallet he counterintuitively needed to download a .txt file containing the correct key from deep inside some kind of Web3 software development kit browser extension.