Martin Shkreli, GCR and Trump: Breaking the mystery of DJT’s origins

• Shkreli’s DJT involvement claim stirs controversy amid unclear ties to Donald Trump.
• GCR’s $100 million bet against Trump’s link to DJT challenges crypto community speculation. 

The Solana [SOL]-based DJT memecoin, rumored to be launched by former U.S. President Donald Trump, has seen significant developments. The rumours on ties to former US president rose mainly due to the acronym DJT, which stands for Donald John Trump. 

Interestingly, Martin Shkreli, infamously known as “Pharma Bro,” publicly claimed in a Twitter Spaces session that he was involved in creating the Solana-based token DJT.

Series of bets on DJT’s original creator

Interestingly, an X user Alice Wise, took to the social media platform and challenged Martin Shkreli to put $1 million into escrow so they could bet that the DJT token was fake.

Adding to the fray was the influential crypto trader GiganticRebirth, also known as GCR, who recently posted for the first time since November 2022.

Source: GCR/X

He joined in on the bet disputing Trump’s alleged involvement in the token and placed a $100 million bet.

He further went ahead and clarified that he would consider the bet resolved if “Donald J Trump himself, says he launched a meme coin himself”.

In a separate post, GCR claimed to have been approached about being involved in the DJT project which he declined. Shkreli denied GCR was ever approached to be a part.

Fast forwarding, Arkham, an on-chain analytics platform, too joined the fray and announced a $150,000 reward for identifying the creator of the $DJT token.

Things started to clear up when scam survivor turned 2D detective ZachXBT came forward and announced that he had sent in a submission to Arkham.

He further suggested that soon after he made the announcement, Martin Shkreli wrote to him in a direct message claiming that he launched the token in collaboration with Barron Trump.

ZachXBT also stated that he could no longer guarantee public endorsement of the token by the Trump family and claimed he had evidence supporting his assertions. 

Source: ZachXBT/X

Interestingly a day before Arkham announced the reward program, ZachXBT took a chance to dig deeper into the case. The scam survivor noticed that the DJT’s Telegram group was the same as those for another cryptocurrency supported by Shkreli. 

Impact on DJT coin

During that time, Shkreli denied being involved with DJT, but the coin continued to gain popularity. According to DEXScreener, the controversial coin saw a remarkable surge of over 200K% since.

However, as of the latest update, DJT experienced a decline of 3.15% over the past 24 hours. This also led to many placing their bets on the coin’s connection to Trump. 

Amid the uncertainty, only 5% of these bets supported the token’s authenticity at the time of writing, according to Polymarket.

Source: Polymarket

The final outcome

Finally, all this drama was put to rest when Arkham asserted that “this bounty has been solved by @zachxbt.”  

Source: Arkham/X