Community baffled by Trump's bizarre ‘SimpDAO’ NFT collection

Even conservatives and MAGA supporters are not pleased with the former president, as they were hanging on for a more serious announcement.

Former president and crypto hater Donald Trump’s bizarre NFT collectible project has left the community baffled.

Even conservatives and avid MAGA supporters are scratching their heads, while analyst Eric Wall likened the project to a “SimpDAO.”

In what Trump called a “major announcement” via his social media platform Truth Social on Dec. 15, the former president unveiled a collection of 45,000 NFT trading cards, with the artwork depicting himself in outfits such as golf attire, hunting gear and a superhero costume.

Thank God, the digital trading cards are here. It was indeed a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT. pic.twitter.com/T1nsqRwr92

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 15, 2022

The Polygon-based nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are selling for $99 each, with buyers automatically entered into a sweepstake that includes “1000s of prizes” such as one-on-one dinners, zoom calls and rounds of golf with Trump.

At the time of writing, there are around 35,600 Trump Digital Trading Cards were listed for secondary sale on OpenSea, with a floor price of 0.065 Ether (ETH), or $82.

People in the NFT community have reported that some of the biggest sales so far have ranged between 1 ETH ($1270) to 2 ETH ($2,541).

35 wallets hold at least 45 trump nfts, which entitles them to dinner with him pic.twitter.com/AsDwa5dehC

— foobar (@0xfoobar) December 15, 2022

Wall, who was one of the first to explain the SimpDAO concept and started his own with EricaDAO, noted the resemblance on Twitter:

“Wait a minute. These NFTs give you access to a community. A dinner with Trump. Golfing with Trump. Zoom calls. One-on-one meetings. Autographs. These aren’t baseball cards. This is a SimpDAO!”

The term "SimpDAO" was coined after social media star Irene Zhao launched IreneDAO in January. The NFT project offers fans — known as "simps" — a way to bond over their love for Irene and get benefits such as free tokens, meet and greets, phone calls etc. It has generated $3.3 million worth of secondary NFT sales to date on OpenSea alone.

Isn't it insane he says he doesn't like cryptocurrencies blablabla and now there's a "MATIC/WETH" error on the checkout page of a product he's selling

Life comes at you fast pic.twitter.com/gDeclpLR1j

— Eric Wall (@ercwl) December 15, 2022

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao ignored the politics and was relatively bullish about what the project signifies, tweeting that the “former United States President issues NFTs. And he didn’t like crypto before. We are getting there.”

In response, Bitcoin proponent and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey asked: “getting where?”

getting where?

— jack (@jack) December 15, 2022

While Trump's polarizing moves are often embraced by his supporters, a surprising number haven’t gotten behind him in this instance.

Far-right internet identity and Capital riot attendee Baked Alaska (Anthime Gionet) tweeted “I can’t believe I'm going to jail for an NFT salesman,” while conservative content creators the Hodgetwins also expressed their dismay.

“Man…when all Patriots are looking for is hope for the future of our country and Trump hypes everybody up with a ‘BIG ANNOUNCEMENT,’” they wrote, adding that “then [he] drops a low quality NFT collection video as the ‘announcement’, it just pushes people away…Damn.”