Is Trump Unveiling a Crypto Wallet? His Associates Say Yes. His Sons Say No.

[Celerity]

The back-and-forth over a potential Trump cryptocurrency wallet on Tuesday exposed rifts among the family’s web of digital currency ventures.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/technology/trump-crypto-wallet-sons-rift.html

https://archive.ph/DW8PG


Eric Trump, left, and Donald Trump Jr. said the family business had no connection with “the Official $TRUMP Wallet.” Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

A flashy new website drew a surge of attention on Tuesday afternoon, purporting to announce the latest cryptocurrency venture backed by President Trump. The developers of Mr. Trump’s memecoin, the website said, were working with a company called Magic Eden to launch “the Official $TRUMP Wallet” — a trading app for customers to buy and sell digital currencies. But the announcement soon triggered a backlash from an unexpected source: Mr. Trump’s sons. Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X that the Trump family business had no connection to the new crypto product. His brother Eric Trump said he knew “nothing about” it. And in a rare social media post, Barron Trump, the youngest Trump son, said that “our family has zero involvement.”

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The sons’ reaction to the announcement appeared to expose a rift in Mr. Trump’s ever-expanding network of crypto ventures, a complex web of businesses run by various family members and associates who now appear to be competing against each other. On one side is Bill Zanker, a longtime Trump business partner and the architect of the president’s memecoin, a type of cryptocurrency usually based on an online joke, which Mr. Trump began promoting shortly before his inauguration in January. On the other are Mr. Trump’s sons, who helped found World Liberty Financial, a separate crypto business that markets its own digital currency, which has generated $550 million in sales.

In a series of text messages to The New York Times, Eric Trump escalated the dispute on Tuesday, saying the Trump family would legally challenge the creation of the “Official $TRUMP Wallet” — even though it was being promoted on social media by an account linked to Mr. Zanker. “There is no deal for this product,” Eric Trump wrote. “There is no agreement for this product. It has not been approved.” Mr. Zanker did not respond to a request for comment. But the memecoin’s official X account confirmed the authenticity of the wallet announcement in a post late Tuesday. Similar language appeared on Magic Eden’s official X account.

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What appeared to have set off the Trump sons were their own plans to offer a similar product to what Mr. Zanker and Magic Eden unveiled. In his post, Donald Trump Jr. wrote that World Liberty Financial would be “launching our official wallet soon.” The back-and-forth illustrated the confusing array of Trump crypto products now on the market. In the last four months, the Trump family and its partners have rushed to profit from the crypto industry’s growth, with President Trump in the White House leading a rollback in crypto regulatory oversight. His embrace of the industry has fueled predictions that crypto is poised to become a major part of the U.S. banking system and mainstream financial markets.

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