Who’s behind the 15ft gold statue of Donald Trump called ‘Don Colossus’?

Standing at 15 feet tall, covered in gold and costing $300,000, a large statue of the President could soon be installed at his beloved Florida golf course.

Dubbed ‘Don Colossus’, the almost comical rendering of Donald Trump was made by a group of cryptocurrency investors as a ‘tribute’ to the leader.

The statue depicts the President pumping his fist in the air, a nod to the famous photo of him taken after his ear was grazed by a bullet during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.

They’ve also used it to promote a crypto ‘meme coin’ called $PATRIOT, as a nod to the President’s apparent love for the digital currency.

A new pedestal at Trump’s golf course in Florida has also been constructed, with rumours that the statue could be unveiled there soon.

Trump messaged one of the statue’s organisers, Pastor Mark Burns, in December and said: ‘It LOOKS FANTASTIC.’

But the crypto coin, which was promoted by the golden likeness of Trump, lost almost all of its value last year, shortly after it went on the market.

And the sculptor of the statue, Alan Cottrill, has claimed he’s owed $75,000 for the intellectual property rights to the statue.

The Trumps have been trying to distance themselves from the actual coin – though apparently, not the statue.

Eric Trump, the President’s son, wrote on X: ‘We appreciate the support and enthusiasm, but we want to be crystal clear — we are not involved in this coin.’

But messages sent by statue organiser Pastor Burns found he wrote to his coworkers: ‘The president just asked me for pictures of his statue in gold leaf.’

Messages seen by the New York Times also found that White House schedulers are ‘actively looking’ for a date when Trump can attend his statue’s grand unveiling.

Trump previously launched a cryptocurrency ahead of his second inauguration, which had an estimated market capitalisation of $6.3billion.

But it represented a significant shift since Trump’s last presidency, when he said: ‘I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.’

In 2021, Trump said Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency, ‘just seems like a scam’, adding: ‘I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.’

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