Does Rudi really know what time it is?
(Care) Rudi really care?
How you get a rude and a reckless?
Don’t you be so crude and feckless
You been drinking brew for breakfast
Rudie can’t fail (no, no)
Rudy’s on a train to nowhere
Halfway down the line
You should also have quoted the following lines:
He don’t want to get there, but he needs time
He ain’t sophisticated, nor well-educated
After all the hours he wasted, still he needs time
My take:
The NFT folks sold the idea to Trump, he’s promised bigly cash. He okays it, making the announcement. Setting up some companies to move the cash around.
The NFT folks “sell” the tokens (distribute them over their own wallets) and sell a couple for real.
Then they move them around to “increase” the value. (The couple of real sales are necessary to pay the electrical bills) Now the listed price is a multiple of the 99.
Time for a couple of “press” releases (plenty of websites shill for crypto). We sold out in 12 hours! Trump NFT sells for 1000$!
Real in some marks.
Sell a couple. the transaction brings some actual cash in the Etherium space (you’d have to have lot of ETH before you can pull of an NFT scam in a profitable manner) a nice round of wash trading makes all boats float!
Promise Trump a bigger cut if he accepts ETH as payment. Sell some ETH for the higher prices (those ransoms have to paid after all) - crashing the price again. Oops sorry Donnie. Your payment isn’t worth much in $. Donnies shell companies are loaded up with cards and debt.
Poof! And it’s gone.
Everything crypto is a scam: Donnie was scammed. He brought in free publicity and some nice new shell companies.
The whole thing is about a couple of $100K max.
But it’s nice work if you can get it.
As I understand it, blockchain transactions are public, but they’re tracked by account name so that the real identity of any particular account holder is not known.
Trump gets (somehow) 10% of the transaction each time one of these NFTs changes hands.
So, is that 10% also recorded publicly on the blockchain? Can we see which account is receiving the 10%, and will that account then be tied to Trump (even if it’s indirectly)?
If there is, I haven’t figured it out. I’m not even sure that commission transactions are conducted through the crypto/blockchain system
But I’ve only been playing with the secondary trading site. It may be possible to view the Polygon chain directly and find likely commission transactions based on timing and dollar amounts. That’s way above my skill level, though.
Maybe that’s why he’s wearing two watches… 
This whole NFT/crypto thing reminds me of something I saw on TV recently about Beanie Babies. When they first came out every was running around buying them because they were convinced that their value would shoot up. Sure enough, in a little while they were being sold on eBay for $1500. Now, you’re lucky to be able to get $3 for them.
Sorry, maybe I’m being dim, but wouldn’t Trump make $200 from the two $1,000 sales? Or are you saying the commission is calculated on the difference between the second sale price and the first?
And in any case, aren’t each of those two traders down the fee paid to Trump? They paid the fee out of their own funds, right? Or is it all just play money at this point?
I’m confused.
You are absolutely right, it was my mistake. I made the calculation based on a 10x mark-up but I used a mark up that was slightly higher.
I was doing back of the envelope stuff to explain the scam, and you are right……Trump’s commission has to come from somewhere. I’m not sure exactly how that is calculated, though.
Let me try it this way —-if Trumpist A sells a card on the market and uses the proceeds to buy a slightly cheaper card that is the same price after fees and taxes and the person that sold that card buys another one that is a wash —— these guys aren’t spending any money even though they are moving a lot of money around. Trump is the only one making money.
I really liked your explanations, @Ann_Hedonia. I did not know about the 10% creator fee that is paid per trade. You’re right – that is the real scam.
You can see the 10% creator fee transactions as well as the 2.5% OpenSea transaction fee if you click on the last column (Time). For the transaction that I looked at the 10% creator fee was split between 4 parties: 0.6%, 0.94%, 4.23%, and 4.23%. You can click on those accounts and see the current balances.
To clarify, the prices listed for the trades is before the fees are deducted (2.5%, 10%, and transaction fees)
Thanks for this! I know almost nothing about blockchain, and pretty much everything I know I picked up in the last few days because I’m sick and I get bored lying in bed all day. But it’s been sort of interesting and I’m glad to hear from someone that knows more than me.
I th8nk that it’s cool that you can trace the commissions to the various wallets.
In other news, MTG and Boebert are scrapping:
I hope they both lose.
Aren’t NFT, bitcoin, and the like also damaging the environment thanks to the resources consumed to operate them?
Weren’t they BFFs a few weeks ago?
IIRC, this isn’t the first time they’ve insulted each other in public…?
Bitcoin and the popular coins, yes. Not a lot when a blockchain is established but eventually very expensive computationally, i.e. electricity. That’s by design.
If there’s not a lot of trading volume, there wouldn’t necessarily be a big environmental impact. But not having a lot of activity sort of defeats the purpose of these things.
Mike Pence does a Hanukk:
I would say he did a Hanukkah, but I left two letters out…