Former first lady Melania Trump sold an NFT for $170,000 – but the wallet that won the auction was reportedly funded by the creators of NFT.
What Happened: According to a report from CryptoSlate, Melania’s NFT collection was minted on the Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) blockchain and the winning bidder paid around 1800 SOL worth $170,000.
After examining the blockchain data, the publication found that the wallet address that minted Melania’s NFT collection sent $473,000 in USD Coin (CRYPTO: USDC) to another address that converted some of the funds to 1816 SOL.
This address then sent the units of SOL to another wallet address that won the auction for Melania’s NFT.
Essentially, the Melania Trump auction winner was funded by the people who set up the auction itself.
Another report from Vice, which contained an in-depth analysis from blockchain sleuth “zachxbt” confirmed that the winning bid was provided by the NFT creator.
A statement from Melania Trump’s representatives neither confirmed nor denied the wash trading allegations.
“The nature of Blockchain protocol is entirely transparent. Accordingly, the public can view each transaction on the blockchain. The transaction was facilitated on behalf of a third-party buyer” they said to CryptoSlate.
Earlier this month, a Chainalysis report revealed that NFT wash traders made as much as $8.9 million in profit in 2021.
Price Action: As of Tuesday morning, SOL was trading at $101.68, up 6.44% in the last 24 hours.
Photo: Courtesy of Exchanges Photos on Flickr
