Controversial investor Martin Shkreli, known as 'Pharma Bro', has claimed that he and Barron Trump, the 18-year-old son of former US President Donald J. Trump, are the people behind the mysterious DJT altcoin.
This statement comes after a significant price increase for memecoin, fueled by speculation about its links to Trump.
Shkreli's claim emerged in a conversation with online cryptocurrency researcher ZachXBT, who shared screenshots of private messages on social platform X, formerly known as Twitter. In these messages, Shkreli revealed that he was collaborating with Barron Trump to create the DJT coin. This admission came after Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain company, offered a $150,000 reward for information on the token's founders.
“I have over 1,000 pieces of evidence that I created this with Barron,” said Shkreli, who was released from prison on fraud charges in May 2022. Shkreli later reiterated these claims in a live discussion on X, claiming that he worked with a team of 40 to 50 people, including Barron Trump, to develop the DJT token.
The DJT token, which operates on the Solana blockchain, experienced a significant price increase of 180% on Monday. This increase followed a report from Pirate Wires that suggested Barron Trump was spearheading the launch of the coin, which has gone unnoticed since its debut in April.
In response to Shkreli's claims, crypto investor Alex Wice posted a skeptical tweet, stating that he would bet $1 million that “DJT is fake.” Another crypto investor known as Gigantic Rebirth upped the ante, betting $100 million on Trump not being involved. “I am aware that there is a conspiracy strategy to bribe people in the Trump orbit to pretend they had something to do with this,” Gigantic Rebirth said on X, claiming that a group of crypto whales conducted a pre-sale and allocated the tokens to key opinion leaders.
Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018 for securities fraud related to his time at hedge fund MSMB Capital Management and pharmaceutical company Retrophin.
*This is not investment advice.