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NEW YORK (AP) – For a cryptocurrency token you can get a digital watercolor painting of Melania Trump’s eyes.
The former First Lady launched a startup this week selling NFTs, or non-tradable tokens, on her website for one Solan token, currently worth around $180 each.
According to a news release, Melania Trump will “regularly” post NFTs on her website, with a portion of the proceeds going to raising the children. It is unclear what percentage of proceeds will be donated or whether donations will go to special foster children-related charities. Melania Trump’s press contact did not respond to an email question about how donations will be structured.
“This is a huge red flag,” says Aaron Dorfman, chairman and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, when a company says “a portion of the proceeds” will go to charities without specifying how much.
“This means that philanthropy wasn’t a serious part of their plans,” Dorfman said. “It’s a marketing gimmick.”
The Trump family has a troubled history with charities, but Melania Trump was not directly involved in a conflict over a charity run by the family in New York.
Donald Trump, while still president, paid a $2 million court-ordered fine after admitting to using the charity as a personal piggy bank. The fine was ordered to be distributed to eight charities.
The Trump Foundation is dissolved.
Additionally, Trump agreed to restrictions if he started a new charity or foundation, and New York State required mandatory education for his children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, all of whom are members of the Trump Foundation.
Immutable tokens are essentially digital certificates of authenticity that can be attached to art, music, or any other type of digital file. NFTs confirm ownership of an item by recording it in a digital ledger known as the blockchain, which is publicly available and stored on computers on the internet, making it virtually impossible to lose or destroy.
The digital artist’s NFT used by Beeple was sold for around $70 million earlier this year. It has sparked great interest in the digital technology that has existed for several years and fueled a Bitcoin craze that made blockchain a household word. Digital cat characters were selling in the six figures until 2017, and today you can buy digital LeBron James basketball hover NFTs for anywhere from a few dollars to nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
Many view NFTs as an investment, although they are often preferred as a fun hobby such as collecting as their value fluctuates. Like cryptocurrency, they are largely unregulated and many experts warn against investing in them.
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