Unfortunately for Trump, just five offers above the starting price of 1,800 SOL have been made — and a sharp fall in the value of SOL means she will only receive $163,800 at current prices.
Melania Trump's NFT collection hasn't performed anywhere near as well as she hoped.
The former first lady was auctioning off three items — a white hat she wore during a 2018 visit to France, a watercolor painting of her wearing the hat, and "an exclusive digital artwork NFT with motion."
Opening bids for "The Head of State Collection" were set at the cash equivalent of $250,000, and bids were only being accepted using SOL, the native token of the Solana blockchain.
Unfortunately for Trump, just five offers above the starting price of 1,800 SOL have been made — and a sharp fall in the value of SOL means she will only receive $163,800 at current prices.
Trump had raised eyebrows when she announced that a "portion" of proceeds from the sale would be used to educate disadvantaged children — and didn't disclose how much she intended to keep.
What Now?
After a bout of bad luck sparked by the recent crash in cryptocurrencies, Trump has a choice to make: hold on to SOL in the hope that it starts appreciating again, or cut her losses and sell.
CoinMarketCap data shows that, at the time of writing, SOL is trading at $92.19 — down 65% from all-time highs of $260 set on Nov. 6.
Solana has been touted as an "Ethereum killer," and the project bills itself as "the fastest blockchain in the world." The project claims to settle transactions faster and far more cheaply, meaning it is potentially better suited for NFT traders and DeFi degens.
But there's a catch: SOL has fallen by 32.89% over the past seven days, far more than other cryptocurrencies in the top 10.
While some of these losses can be attributed to the sell-offs gripping the markets, Solana has also been grappling with yet more major network outages that are undermining confidence in the project.
