It’s known as “Don Colossus.”
At 15 feet tall, the statue of President Trump, 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.
For more than a year, the golden statue has been at the center of one of the stranger moneymaking ventures of the Trump era. A group of cryptocurrency investors paid $300,000 to have a sculptor create it as a tribute to Mr. Trump, an outspoken crypto proponent.
Then they used it to promote a memecoin called $PATRIOT.
Now, improbably, the project appears close to fruition. A pedestal made of concrete and stainless steel was installed last month on the grounds of Mr. 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.
“It LOOKS FANTASTIC,” Mr. Trump wrote to Mr. Burns in December.
Virtually nearly everyone in the crypto world has tried to profit from the Trump presidency, striking business deals with his family or seeking regulatory relief from his administration. But few have attempted it as boldly as the backers of $PATRIOT.
A memecoin is a type of cryptocurrency with hardly any function beyond speculation. It’s usually based on a viral joke or celebrity mascot, and worth only as much as online fans are willing to pay. The crucial ingredient is internet hype, enough to convince potential buyers that the price will keep going up.
The construction of a giant statue was an expensive way to gin up social media excitement. But it was a potentially profitable plan. 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, as Mr. Trump promised to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet.” At an event in Washington during inauguration weekend, the coin’s backers presented a bronze miniature of the statue to Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser, and mingled with other conservative influencers.
But delays and infighting have marred the venture, offering a window into the volatile world of memecoins, which are plagued by scams that often end up costing investors money. The $PATRIOT coin’s price cratered last year, losing nearly all its value. As the coin’s backers rushed to finish the statue and boost coin sales, they clashed with their Ohio-based sculptor, Alan Cottrill.
In text messages reviewed by The Times, Mr. Cottrill said 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.
“Yes lol as we planned to from day 1,” replied Ashley Sansalone, a crypto developer who worked on $PATRIOT, as well as a separate coin called Elon GOAT.
In a statement, Mr. Sansalone said that Mr. Cottrill 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.
But it is not clear when the statue will go on display.
After The Times asked the White House and the Trump Organization about $PATRIOT on Monday, the president’s son Eric Trump posted about it on X.
“We appreciate the support and enthusiasm,” he said, “but we want to be crystal clear — we are not involved in this coin.”
Creating Don Colossus
The plan to build “Don Colossus” was hatched in a group chat on Telegram, a messaging app where the crypto faithful gather to share tips and promote coins. It was July 2024, and Mr. Trump had just survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., his fist raised in the air.
Mr. Sansalone wanted to turn that image of defiance into the basis of a memecoin. He teamed up with Dustin Stockton, a right-wing activist, as well as Brock Pierce, a politically connected crypto investor with a long history of legal and financial disputes.
Not long after the bullet grazed Mr. Trump’s ear, Mr. Sansalone reached out to Mr. Cottrill, 73, whose bronze statue of Thomas Edison is on display in the U.S. Capitol. Over the years, Mr. Cottrill had built statues of more than a dozen presidents, including 10-foot monuments to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
The crypto investors wanted Mr. Trump’s statue to be even taller. They also requested certain cosmetic adjustments.
“I had him very lifelike,” Mr. Cottrill said in an interview last month. “The crypto guys said I had to get rid of some of the turkey neck. I had to thin him down.”
By Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Cottrill had finished the statue — a bronze goliath, not yet covered in gold leaf, but taller than anything he had sculpted before. That December, Mr. Trump posted a link to an article about the project in Breitbart News, which said that Mr. Stockton was in touch with the inaugural committee, discussing plans to unveil the statue the weekend of Mr. Trump’s swearing-in.
The timing of the post was perfect. The $PATRIOT coin had recently gone on sale.
“The people’s crypto token,” its website reads. “The statue they couldn’t cancel.”
Then came two major setbacks. The frigid weather in Washington caused a logistical mess, scuttling plans to unveil the statue. And shortly before his swearing-in, Mr. Trump launched his own competing memecoin, $TRUMP.
As crypto traders rushed to buy the official coin, Mr. Stockton and Mr. Pierce hosted an event called the Patriot Awards at the National Press Club in Washington, where they handed out miniature statues.
“A lot of the air in that room was let out because, all of a sudden, Trump’s token was shooting through the roof,” Mr. Cottrill said.
By the end of January, the price of $PATRIOT had plunged more than 90 percent.
‘A juicy, juicy spot’
Despite that disappointment, the crypto investors continued their marketing push. George Santos, the disgraced ex-congressman, showed off a miniature Trump statue on Fox News last February and made sure to name-check the $PATRIOT cryptocurrency.
Mr. Stockton shared the clip on X, declaring, “You can’t pay for this kind of exposure!” (In a brief call, Mr. Santos said that “I was paid to advertise it, and I was very open about it.”)
The investors were also cultivating another influential ally: Mr. Burns, the prominent pastor and Trump confidante who is sometimes described as the president’s informal “spiritual adviser.”
Mr. Burns began working on the statue after Mr. Pierce introduced him to the team. He soon became instrumental in a plan to reinvigorate the project — by coating the bronze statue in gold.
“The president just asked me for pictures of his statue in gold leaf,” Mr. Burns wrote to his collaborators in November.
Mr. Trump got his wish. Mr. Sansalone told the group he had consulted with a gold leaf supplier in New York who had helped outfit Trump Tower. Mr. Cottrill shared a photograph of his latest work.
“It’s so bright and beautiful,” Mr. Sansalone responded.
“Wow…sending to the president,” Mr. Burns wrote.
Mr. Trump was apparently impressed. Last month, Mr. Cottrill traveled to Florida to install the 7,000-pound pedestal on the grounds of Mr. Trump’s Doral golf complex (“a juicy, juicy spot,” Mr. Stockton boasted on social media). White House schedulers are now “actively looking” for a date when the president can attend the statue’s official unveiling, Mr. Burns wrote in a text to his collaborators in January.
It could have been a moment of triumph for Mr. Cottrill. But instead, he said, he is fed up with the investors behind the Trump statue.
Until fall 2024, Mr. Cottrill said, he was not aware that the crypto investors were using images of his work to market a digital currency, which he viewed as a violation of his intellectual property rights.
Eventually, he reached an agreement with them: They would pay $150,000 for the rights to the statue. He was still waiting for the remainder of that payment, he said, as well as other funds he was owed — a total of roughly $90,000.
“As far as I’m concerned, they haven’t bought the rights to the I.P., and they’re using it illegally,” he said. “That statue will not leave my foundry until everything they owe me is paid.”
But the organizers of the effort argue that the project has not been much of a moneymaker.
Mr. Burns said he never requested or received any compensation. And in an interview, Mr. Stockton said the $PATRIOT coin was simply a financing mechanism to “help fund the activities around the statue.”
“I haven’t seen anyone make a lot of money,” Mr. Stockton said.
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, Kimberly Benza, said the company had “no knowledge” of the memecoin until The Times asked about it this week. She did not respond to a question about whether the statue unveiling would go forward.
The drama has not stopped the project’s social media promotion. An X account tied to the coin recently posted photos of the Doral pedestal, alongside a pinned message detailing instructions on how to buy the memecoin.
“The dream is alive and well,” Mr. Sansalone said during a livestream with Mr. Burns on Jan. 16.
In addition to the giant statue, the group hopes to offer Mr. Trump one of the miniature versions, coated in the same gold finish.
“We’d like to have something placed in the Oval Office,” Mr. Sansalone said.
David Yaffe-Bellany writes about the crypto industry from New York. He can be reached at [email protected].
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