Nobody donates their cryptocurrencies to Donald Trump – DL News

• Donald Trump’s campaign began accepting cryptocurrency donations in May.
• But he raised just $59,000 in cryptocurrencies, an analysis showed.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign made headlines last month when it began accepting cryptocurrency donations.

That decision just paid off: Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, founders of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, each said they donated 15.47 Bitcoins, worth about $1 million, to Trump’s campaign.

But the list of Trump’s other cryptocurrency donors is quite short.

According to one study, Trump’s campaign raised less than $60,000 in cryptocurrency from just 218 donors. analyses of blockchain data through June 17 conducted by Breadcrumbs, a blockchain analytics company.

The $59,385 in cryptocurrencies only includes assets that can be tracked to Ethereum, Polygon and Base, the blockchains the Trump campaign is using to accept donations, according to Breadcrumbs data analyst James Delmore.

“Yeah, $59,000 is nothing,” Delmore said, adding that most of the cryptocurrency donations likely came from Coinbase order books. “Donating onchain is not easy.”

Fundraising skills

The meager haul belies the former president’s fundraising prowess: More than $260 million was raised through his campaign, according to OpenSecrets data until April 30 and a Trump campaign announcement the details of the May fundraiser.

Outside groups supporting Trump have raised more than $123 million.

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Trump, who threw its weight behind cryptocurrencies last month, is not the first pro-cryptocurrency presidential candidate. Third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. began accepting Bitcoin donations last year.

Trump is, however, the first candidate from either of the country’s two major political parties to embrace cryptocurrencies.

President Joe Biden is considering becoming the second, The block reported last week.

“This is the official start of cryptocurrency donations,” Delmore said.

To count Trump’s onchain fundraising, Delmore made $1 donations on Ethereum, Polygon, and Base, and then tracked the flow of that cryptocurrency to its final destination: a Coinbase deposit address.

And the pro-cryptocurrency political action committee FairShake has a war chest of around $100 million, show the documents.

Other donations

But the former president’s $59,000 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 respond to a request for comment.

“Cryptocurrency Army”

Less than two weeks after Trump he positioned himself as a crypto candidate in the US presidential election, he started accepting crypto donations.

“Biden surrogate Elizabeth Warren said in a cryptocurrency attack that she was building an ‘anti-crypto army’ to limit Americans’ right to make their own financial choices,” the campaign reads She said at the moment.

“MAGA supporters, now with a new cryptocurrency option, will build a cryptocurrency army leading the campaign to victory on November 5!”How cryptocurrency is donated

Delmore described how the donations were processed: Smart contracts on each blockchain used Uniswap, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, to exchange the donated cryptocurrency for USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the dollar.

As of June 17, 117 wallets have donated a combined value of $11,323.87 in USDC to the Trump campaign on the Base blockchain.

Another 92 wallets donated $27,459.61 in USDC to the Trump campaign on Polygon, while only nine wallets on Ethereum donated $20,601.90 in USDC.

Delmore attributed this to Ethereum’s notoriously high transaction fees: His $1 donation carried a $24 fee, he said.

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