In the early morning of June 6, Musk and Trump completely tore each other apart. Less than a week after Musk stepped down as the head of the "Government Efficiency Department" (DOGE), the two began to expose and fire at each other on the X platform. This caused Tesla's stock price to drop by over 15% in a single day, and Trump Media Group (TMTG)'s stock price also plummeted by 7.82%. As this "political reality show" reached its climax, cracks also appeared within Trump's crypto empire.
Presidential Live Stream Mud-Slinging, Global Netizens Watch the Drama
On the morning of June 6, Musk suddenly posted on the social platform X, "It's time to drop a real bombshell: Trump appears in the Epstein files. This is the real reason why these files were not made public. Have a nice day, DJT!"
Interestingly, from MagicEden CEO Jack's tweet, it can be seen that he recently attended a dinner with the founder of Slingshot, who was mentioned earlier as being acquired, and this tweet was also reposted by the official account of $TRUMP meme. On June 3rd, TRUMP Meme officially stated that they airdropped 3 different Solana Non-Fungible Tokens to wallets of users participating in the "Dinner with Trump" event, which now seems to be a kind of preheating for the "Trump Wallet App".
The person who planned the $TRUMP dinner in Washington in May 2025 is Bill Zanker, a long-time friend of President Trump. Bill Zanker is the "authorized person" of Fight Fight Fight LLC, the company behind the $TRUMP token, which, together with CIC Digital LLC, owns 80% of the token shares, valued at billions of dollars.
Bill and Trump co-authored "Think Big and Kick ASS in Business and Life" in 2007. Additionally, they co-founded the ill-fated crowdfunding website FundAnything in 2013, which Zanker started with his own $1 million. However, a year later, Trump distanced himself from the project, only posting a few dozen tweets and stating that "collecting this funding took too much of my time and energy", after which the project "came to nothing". Until 2022, when Bill Zanker proposed the "trump Non-Fungible Token" business concept, the two have been collaborating in the crypto field since then.
Related reading: 《Three Failures, Four Attempts: Why is Trump Persistent about the "Crypto Monopoly"?》
CIC Digital LLC was established in 2021 by John Marion, one of Trump's lawyers, and former advisor Nick Luna. As an affiliate of the Trump Group, CIC Digital LLC collaborates with Fight Fight Fight LLC to operate the $TRUMP token website and earn transaction revenue.
CIC Digital LLC is responsible for authorizing Trump's name and portrait for Non-Fungible Token projects like Trump Digital Trading Cards. Bill Zanker is considered a key driver of Trump's Non-Fungible Token projects. CIC Digital LLC licensed Trump's brand to NFT INT LLC (a company registered in Delaware), with Zanker playing an organizational and promotional role, although he does not directly own NFT INT LLC.
As a renowned Non-Fungible Token platform, Magic Eden has also collaborated with the Trump Digital Trading Cards project. In March 2024, the Trump card Non-Fungible Token project announced its migration to Magic Eden, stating that Magic Eden "has established a dedicated team to assist users in managing Trump digital card collections".
Besides Bill Zanker, the community believes that David Sacks, chairman of the crypto committee, is also a key figure behind $TRUMP. Known as one of PayPal's founders, David Sacks later became famous for creating Yammer and selling it to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. In the crypto world, his most important identity is as an investor in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin and a Solana maximalist.
Within a few days of $TRUMP, a token named $MELANIA, after Trump's wife, was also issued. Messari founder Ryan Selkis tweeted to Trump, suggesting he fire the personnel who recommended launching the $MELANIA project. "The project team lacks professional capabilities, could cause significant economic losses and reputation damage, and the project decisions did not fully consider Trump's interests," Selkis pointed out the issues with $MELANIA.
Compared to the $TRUMP token, $MELANIA's issuance was more hasty, with incomplete front-end code, uncompressed images, a website built just a day before the project launch, and imprecise legal text. Many netizens speculate that $MELANIA and $TRUMP were handled differently and might not have been operated by the same team.
Similar to the previous "schedule clash" of $TRUMP and $MELANIA, after MagicEden announced its crypto wallet collaboration with $TRUMP, Trump's eldest son stated that WLFI would also launch its own official wallet. However, "Trump wallets" are not like memecoins, and only one Trump concept wallet app can exist, which led to today's "true and false Sun Wukong" farce.
Eric Trump sent a series of text messages to The New York Times, further escalating the dispute, stating that the Trump family will legally challenge the "$TRUMP Wallet", despite the wallet being promoted on social media by an account related to Bill Zanker, who is also part of the "Trump interest group". "This product has not reached any agreement," Eric Trump wrote, "It has not been approved".
WLFI was established on September 16, 2024, when President-elect Donald Trump announced his entry into X. The company was founded by real estate mogul Steve Witkoff and his son Zach Witkoff, with Trump's sons EricTrump and DonaldJTrumpJr also participating as team members.
Zach Witkoff, son of Witkoff and co-founder of the crypto enterprise World Liberty Financial, announced at a conference in Dubai that the company has reached an agreement with Tahnoon's enterprise, which will purchase $2 billion worth of USD1 stablecoin issued by World Liberty. The Witkoff family and the Trump family are expected to receive tens of millions of dollars in annual profits "The Trump family holds 60% of World Liberty Financial's shares".
Since last fall, the Trump family has started multiple crypto projects, including American Bitcoin, $TRUMP, $MELANIA, World Liberty Financial, and Trump Media & Technology Group. The Trump family's crypto business has not stopped recently. Besides today's wallet farce, Trump's social platform Truth Social submitted a Bitcoin ETF application, Trump's wife's official meme coin $MELANIA reached a liquidity provision agreement with Wintermute, and WLFI airdropped 47 USD1 tokens to its token subscribers' addresses, seemingly entering the stablecoin track smoothly.
At this point, the $TRUMP and Trump Non-Fungible Token team, which seems to have exhausted its market benefits and can no longer extract liquidity, appears to be gradually moving away from the "Trump Group" core circle.
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