Who's behind the mysterious DJT coin? Martin Shkreli claims ownership with Barron Trump.

By Louis Goss

Martin Shkreli, the investor and convicted securities fraudster widely referred to as "Pharma Bro," has claimed that he and Barron Trump, the former president's youngest son, are behind the launch of the mysterious DJT crypto token, following a rally in the price of the meme coin on rumors of its purported link to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate in a third consecutive presidential election.

From the archives (January 2022): Martin Shkreli banned from drug industry for life and ordered to return $64 million in profits

Shkreli told online crypto investigator ZachXBT he had worked with Barron Trump to launch the coin following a hunt for those behind it, according to apparent screenshots of private messages posted on the social-media platform X.

"I have over 1000 pieces of evidence I created it with Barron," Shkreli, who was released from prison in May 2022, said in what appeared to have been a message to ZachXBT after blockchain company Arkham Intelligence offered $150,000 to anyone who could prove who created the DJT token.

Shkreli reiterated the statements in a live event on X, in which he said he worked with a team of 40 to 50 people, including Donald Trump's 18-year-old son, to launch the CDJT token, according to reports by those who listened to the Spaces event.

Donald Trump's office and Shkreli were contacted by MarketWatch for comment.

DJT, a Solana-based token, surged by up to 180% on Monday following a report from Pirate Wires that Barron Trump had spearheaded the creation of the meme coin, which had lingered in relatively obscurity after launching in April.

Crypto investor Alex Wice later posted a tweet stating he would be willing to bet Shkreli $1 million that "DJT is fake" before fellow crypto trader Gigantic Rebirth upped the stakes in wagering $100 million that Trump was not linked to the token.

"I'm well aware there is a cabal strategy to bribe people in the Trump orbit to pretend they had something to do with this, when in reality a cabal of crypto whales did a presale and allocation to KOLs [key opinion leaders]," Gigantic Rebirth said in a post on X.

Crypto sleuth ZachXBT later flagged transaction data showing a major DJT holder executed a sale of $832,174 in the meme token via an account that is also a major holder of the Shoggoth token, which is linked to Shkreli's Shmartoggoth.ai project.

Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018 after being found guilty on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in relation to his tenures at the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management and the pharmaceutical company Retrophin.

The hedge-fund manager was given the nickname "Pharma Bro" in the press after he started Turing Pharmaceuticals in 2015, a company that purchased the rights to out-of-patent drugs before increasing the prices of those medicines.

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-Louis Goss

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06-19-24 1811ET

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