Donald Trump’s friend and former political consultant, Roger Stone, has confirmed that neither the 45th U.S president nor his son, Barron, were involved in the DJT Solana meme coin that’s recently made headlines.
This comes after DJT, a month-old meme coin, was rumored to be Trump’s official meme coin. The rumors were unsubstantiated, but speculation and hype still drove the coin to a $383 million market cap. It was eventually revealed that Martin Shrekli actually created the token. He claimed that he collaborated with Trump’s 18-year-old son, Barron Trump, to create the coin.
As doubts and rumors continued to swirl, Trump’s long-time ally, Stone, took to Twitter to settle these claims. “[Donald Trump] and son Barron NOT involved in any way with DJT,” he said, in the early hours of Thursday.
.@realDonaldTrump and son Barron NOT involved in any way with $DJT https://t.co/0O8IASO9UB
— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) June 20, 2024
His dispelling of the claim came just a few hours after Shrekli had been on a Twitter Spaces claiming that Barron was involved.
“We did this on [Barron’s] computer. He ran the programs,” the 41-year-old Pharma Bro said. “We spoke every day for 10 hours a day for the last week.”
He also said that he spoke with crypto influencer Ansem for a consultation on what percentage of tokens to give Trump. After originally pitching 70%, Shrekli claims, Ansem pushed back on this, suggesting that this amount should be put into the liquidity pool, rather than Trump’s wallet.
“The Trump team did not like that,” Pharma Bro said in the Twitter Spaces. “It took me about a week to show that Ansem was right. Paradoxically, it made a lot more sense to stock the liquidity pool.”
These clips were put in a thread by the Twitter Spaces host Mario Nawfal. Once Trump ally Stone was made aware of them, he broke his silence.
Now the question is, does this bring a close to the recent bet Shrekli entered?
On Tuesday, he wagered $100 million with pseudonymous crypto trader GiganticRebirth, commonly referred to as GCR, that the DJT token had ties to the Trump family.
GCR set the rule that the former president would have to personally say that he launched the token for Shrekli to win the bet. Now, with Trump’s former consultant claiming he had no involvement, does GCR get his $100 million? Neither Shrekli nor GCR immediately responded to Decrypt’s request for comment.
In spite of all of this, since Stone’s tweet, DJT is up 15% to $0.01747. Over the past 24 hours, it’s up an even more impressive 87%, as it sits at a market cap of $175 million.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
