By Shelly Melancon (Switzerland)
The wife of the former American president, Melania Trump, has denied the allegations that the winner of her NFT auction bid was the NFT creator herself. A probe of the auction proves that the crypto wallet used for buying the NFT was the same as the one used by the person that listed the project for sale.
The Former First Lady’s NFT Auction Failure
Two months ago, Melania Trump announced that she would launch an NFT platform and showed a list of NFTs about to be launched. Last month, she listed the NFT collection titled “head of state collection 2022.” The collection included a water-colored piece of herself and the wide-brimmed white hat she wore during her visit to France President Emmanual Macron four years ago.
The collection was listed as a single sale and was to be sold for 1,850 sol (or $250k when the listing was made). Sadly, the auction coincided with the dip period of the crypto market as the bids received were not up to ten. Also, the winning bid amounting was equivalent to $162.12K because sol had lost 45% of its value at that time. A little while later, Mrs. Trump’s website released the collection’s bid history, which showed the wallet address of the winner.
Also read:Crypto Spy Deciphers Complex Transaction Chain
After reviewing the blockchain transaction history for this auction sale, motherboard (a crypto analytics firm) revealed its findings with the famous crypto spy, Zachxbt. Zachxbt published his claims on Twitter alleging that the crypto wallet used for creating the NFT collection was the same as the one used for buying it.
Summarising his tweets, Zachxbt stated that the creator of the NFT collection sent the funds to the winner of the bid while this supposed ‘bid winner’ returned the funds to a crypto wallet traceable to the NFT creator.
Unclear Clarification
After several requests for clarification by the media, the former first lady’s office issued a statement saying, “there is complete transparency involved in the blockchain process. Thus, anyone can access all blockchain transactions. But, the buyer of this collection preferred to remain anonymous, which was why the transaction seemed like the buyer and seller was the same.”
However, analysts claim that this clarification remains unclear. This assertion by the office of the ex-first lady is questionable, especially as there were many wallets involved in this transaction. More importantly, many analysts are curious to know why the owner of the collection was involved in the bidding process and, by extension, the bid winner? Also, how come the winner purchased the NFTs with the exact minimum bid amount?
Despite the many questions, the first lady’s office declined to reveal the identity of the bid winner. Also, many industry experts expect that Mrs. Trump’s office needs to explain why there is a complex transaction chain for the sale of this collection and why the funds were returned to the owner of the NFT collection.
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