U.S. President Donald Trump reacts, as he attends a ceremony held to dedicate a 4-mile stretch of road from West Palm Beach Airport to his Mar-a-Lago estate as 'President Donald J. Trump Boulevard', at the Mar-a-Lago est
The New York Times reports a band of cryptocurrency investors benefiting from President Donald Trump’s lax crypto trading laws have built a 15-foot tall, gold-covered statue of President Trump.
“It’s known as ‘Don Colossus,’ reports the New York Times. “… Mounted on its 7,000-pound pedestal, is about the height of a two-story building — a giant effigy cast in bronze and finished with a thick layer of gold leaf.”
The group of cryptocurrency investors paid a sculptor $300,000 to create it as a tribute to Trump. Then they used it to promote a memecoin called $PATRIOT,” reports the Times. The investors originally wanted the statue to be even taller. Trump and his family have enjoyed a personal windfall from crypto-related enterprises since Trump began wiping away crypto-related regulations.
Now the project appears nearly complete with a pedestal made of concrete and stainless steel recently installed on the grounds of Trump’s golf complex in Doral, Fla.
“Pastor Mark Burns, one of the organizers of the effort and a friend of Mr. Trump’s, told his collaborators that the president planned to attend the statue’s unveiling there, according to messages reviewed by The New York Times,” said the Times.
“It LOOKS FANTASTIC,” the Times reports Trump telling Burns in December.
“The … giant statue was an expensive way to gin up social media excitement. But it was a potentially profitable plan,” reports the Times. “The investors who financed the statue were given stashes of the coins, which can sometimes skyrocket in value, according to one of the project organizers. For months, the backers of ‘Don Colossus’ posted work-in-progress images on X and forged alliances in the MAGA world, with the aim of securing a marketing coup — a spot for the statue on an official Trump property.”
The $PATRIOT coin went on sale in late 2024 and briefly surged, but delays and infighting marred the venture, and the $PATRIOT coin’s price “cratered last year,” reports the Times, losing nearly all its value. As the coin’s backers hurried to complete the statue and boost coin sales, they clashed with Ohio-based sculptor, Alan Cottrill, who complained in texts that he was owed $75,000 for the intellectual property rights to the statue.
“You are using my copyrighted image in marketing your token!” he wrote to one of the coin’s backers last month, according to the Times.
Ashley Sansalone, a crypto creator who worked on $PATRIOT, as well as a crypto scheme called Elon GOAT, said in a statement that the artist would be paid in full before the statue was unveiled.
“Under any business agreement, there’s always some funds withheld until the finished product is complete,” he said.
Trump’s son Eric Trump posted on X, insisting that the Trump family is “not involved in this coin.”
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