The back-and-forth over a potential Trump cryptocurrency wallet on Tuesday exposed rifts among the family’s web of digital currency ventures.
A flashy new website drew a surge of attention on Tuesday afternoon, purporting to announce the latest cryptocurrency venture backed by President Trump.
The developers of Mr. Trump’s memecoin, the website said, were working with a company called Magic Eden to launch “the Official $TRUMP Wallet” — a trading app for customers to buy and sell digital currencies.
But the announcement soon triggered a backlash from an unexpected source: Mr. Trump’s sons.
Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X that the Trump family business had no connection to the new crypto product. His brother Eric Trump said he knew “nothing about” it. And in a rare social media post, Barron Trump, the youngest Trump son, said “our family has zero involvement.”
The sons’ reaction to the announcement appeared to expose a rift in Mr. Trump’s ever-expanding network of crypto ventures, a complex web of businesses run by various family members and associates who now appear to be competing against each other.
On one side is Bill Zanker, a longtime Trump business partner and the architect of the president’s memecoin, a type of cryptocurrency usually based on an online joke, which Mr. Trump began promoting shortly before his inauguration in January. On the other are Mr. Trump’s sons, who helped found World Liberty Financial, a separate crypto business that markets its own digital currency, which has generated $550 million in sales.
In a series of text messages to The New York Times, Eric Trump escalated the dispute on Tuesday, saying the Trump family would legally challenge the creation of the “Official $TRUMP Wallet” — even though it was being promoted on social media by an account linked to Mr. Zanker.