Melania Trump auctions hat, gets very few bids

Former first lady of the United States Melania Trump had auctioned three items at a $250,000 opening bid and received only five bids by the end of the action on Wednesday (26 January) night.

Melania Trump had said that a portion of the auction would go towards charity.

Earlier in January, Melania had announced that she would auction off a "Head of State Collection" that included a custom wide-brimmed hat that she wore to meet French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018, along with a watercolour painting of herself wearing the hat and a non-fungible token (NFT) of the painting, CNN reported.

Each of the bids on the items was around the minimum requirement of 1,800 Solana tokens - the cryptocurrency which Melania chose as the only way to pay for the items.

However, the crypto market suffered a steep dive since Malania announced the auction, which meant that despite reaching the minimum requirement, the auction failed to reach its $250,000 threshold.

In early January when Melania announced the auction, Solana was trading at a price of about $170 per token according to the Daily Mail. By the time the auction closed on Wednesday, the price had dropped to around $95 per token.

This meant that the lot was sold for about $170,000, which is $80,000 less than the asking price.

The custom hat included in the auction was designed by French-American designer Herve Pierre.

The physical and digital paintings of Trump wearing the hat included in the auction were created by French artist Marc-Antoine Coulon.