The DJT Token has recently been making rounds in the crypto space due to its reported connection to Donald and Barron Trump. “Pirate Wires”, a new media outlet, was the first to link the DJT token with the Trump family in a recent tweet. The general public was, by and large, skeptical about their involvement due to a lack of evidence.
Subsequently, Martin Shkreli created an X space and dubbed it “$DJT is real,” where he would once reiterate that the DJT token had real connections to the Trump family and that it was launched by Barron Trump. Similarly to the first tweet, no real evidence was provided.
Who is Martin Shkreli, and why does this matter?
Martin Shkreli is an American investor and businessman, also widely known as “Pharma Bro”. The nickname stems from the infamous fiasco when Turing, a pharmaceutical company founded by Shkreli, obtained the manufacturing license for Daraprim and then raised its price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
Shortly after, in 2017, Shkreli was convicted on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison and paid about $7,4 million in fines and an additional $64 million in fines to the victims of the civil antitrust case. Released in May 2022, Shkreli is currently on parole and banned from serving as an officer of any publicly traded company.
So, who is behind the DJT token?
Arkham Intelligence set a bounty of $150,000 to anyone who finds conclusive evidence confirming the creator of the DJT Token. On-chain detective ZachXBT has been awarded the bounty for identifying Martin Shkreli as the original creator mere hours after the bounty had been posted.
This identification raises potential legal issues for Shkreli, as it implies a breach of Shkreli’s ongoing parole, although he himself denies this. Arkham Intelligence confirmed that ZachXBT provided conclusive evidence, including a direct message from Shkreli acknowledging his involvement in creating the token alongside an individual referred to as "Barron," presumed to be referencing Trump’s son, Barron Trump, although there is no concrete evidence to support this claim.