The blockchain is anonymous, but it’s not the best place to keep secrets. This is especially true if you were the First Lady of the United States.

However, this tokenized mystery entangled Melania Trump, the former president’s wife. Blockchain records quickly revealed that Melania Trump’s recently released NFT collection was actually sold to her creator.

Last month former First Lady Melania Trump launched her own non-fungible token collection called the “Head of State Collection.” The set reflected the Trump Administration’s first official state visit and featured three items, including the iconic white hat worn by Melania Trump, a signed watercolor painting by Marc-Antoine Coulon, and a piece of animated digital artwork.

The ‘Head of State Collection’ was minted on the blockchain and opened for auction with an initial bidding price of $250,000, denominated in SOL tokens. Melania Trump’s Office announced that a portion of the proceeds would go to support science and technology students from foster care.

The two-week NFT auction closed on January 25th with the ‘Head of State Collection’ eventually being sold to an anonymous bidder who paid 1,800 SOL tokens, worth $195,282 USD at the time.

But as blockchain records later revealed, the 1,799.50 SOL payment in fact came from an intermediary address, which had itself received those same funds from the address of the Melania Trump collection’s creator not long before. The same creator’s wallet then sent 1,800 SOL tokens back to the intermediate address, from which the crypto was exchanged for USDC stablecoins.

Although the Office of Melania Trump did not offer any explanations for this transaction, it is clear that no place remains vacant for very long. The crypto community, however, has its own versions of the events leading up to the highly publicized NFT mystery.

Some users of Twitter (NYSE) accused Trump tax evasion, and theft from charitable organizations:

Some others, however, attempted to justify the NFT funds’ mysterious movement by suggesting the transactions were intended to facilitate an unidentified buyer buying digital currencies.

A third, and more popular narrative, simply interpreted First Lady’s NFT mystery as creating artificial demand. Tweets also mentioned art auctions where fake buyers show up when bids are not forthcoming.

Imitating buyers for your own NFTs is not exactly a new strategy in the world of digital assets, in fact the technique was quite popular back in the golden age of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), when the original owners used it to boost their project’s price. However, until an official statement is released by Melania Trump’s NFT collection creator, the crypto space will remain in the dark.

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