Bitcoin
No one is donating their crypto to Donald Trump – DL News
- Donald Trump’s campaign began accepting crypto donations in May.
- But he raised just $59,000 in cryptocurrencies, an analysis showed.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign made waves last month when it began accepting crypto donations.
That decision paid off: Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, founders of crypto exchange Gemini, each one said they donated 15.47 Bitcoins, worth about $1 million, to Trump’s campaign.
But the list of Trump’s other cryptocurrency donors is somewhat short.
Trump’s campaign raised less than $60,000 in cryptocurrency from just 218 donors, according to a report. analysis of blockchain data through June 17, driven by Breadcrumbs, a blockchain analytics company.
The $59,385 in crypto only includes assets that can be tracked on Ethereum, Polygon and Base, the blockchains the Trump campaign is using to accept donations, according to Breadcrumbs data analyst James Delmore.
“Yes, $59,000 is nothing,” Delmore said, adding that most of the crypto donations were likely in Coinbase order books. “Donating onchain is not easy.”
Fundraising capacity
The meager result belies the former president’s fundraising capacity: through his campaign, he raised more than US$260 million, according to OpenSecrets data until April 30th and a Trump campaign announcement detailing fundraising in May.
Outside groups supporting Trump have raised more than $123 million.
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Trump, who gave his full weight to crypto last monthis not the first pro-crypto presidential candidate.
Third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began accepting Bitcoin donations last year.
Trump is, however, the first nominee from one of the country’s two major political parties to accept encryption.
I also just donated $1 million in bitcoin (15.47 BTC) to @realDonaldTrump and will vote for him in November.
Here’s the TL;DR – President Trump is:
Pro-Bitcoin
Pro-encryption
Pro-businessAnd he will end the Biden administration’s war on encryption. Forward! https://t.co/r6iDP7BdbE
-Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) June 20, 2024
President Joe Biden is considering becoming the second, The block reported last week.
“This is the official start of crypto donations,” said Delmore.
To account for Trump’s on-chain fundraising, Delmore made $1 donations in Ethereum, Polygon, and Base and then tracked the flow of that crypto to its final destination: a Coinbase deposit address.
And pro-crypto political action committee FairShake has a war chest of around $100 million, records show.
Other donations
But the former president’s $59,000 in cryptocurrency haul does not include donations made through Coinbase, the centralized exchange chosen to facilitate the campaign’s cryptocurrency donations.
It also does not include donations made on the recently added options Gemini and Anedot, a platform that allows people to make crypto donations.
The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.
‘Crypto Army’
Less than two weeks after Trump positioned himself As a crypto candidate in the US presidential election, he started accepting crypto donations.
“Biden surrogate Elizabeth Warren said in an attack on cryptocurrency that she was building an ‘anti-crypto army’ to restrict Americans’ right to make their own financial choices,” the campaign he said at the time.
“MAGA supporters, now with a new cryptocurrency option, will build a crypto army leading the campaign to victory on November 5th!”
How Crypto Is Donated
Delmore described how donations were processed: smart contracts on each blockchain used Uniswap, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, to exchange the donated cryptocurrency for USDC, a dollar-pegged stablecoin.
As of June 17, 117 wallets have donated a combined $11,323.87 worth of USDC to the Trump campaign on the Base blockchain.
Another 92 wallets donated $27,459.61 worth of USDC to the Trump campaign on Polygon, and just nine wallets on Ethereum donated $20,601.90 worth of USDC.
Delmore attributed this to Ethereum’s notoriously high transaction fees — his $1 donation incurred a $24 fee, he said.
Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi correspondent at DL News. Have a tip? Email at aleks@dlnews.com.