President Donald Trump launched his own cryptocurrency just before taking office in January in one of the most blatantly unethical financial schemes from any U.S. president of the modern era. And while the $TRUMP memecoin hasn’t gotten as much attention lately compared to his other wildly unethical endeavors, that could change next month. Because the president is hosting a private dinner for people who’ve purchased the most $TRUMP.
The dinner, first reported by Bloomberg News, will be open to the top 220 people who own the most $TRUMP crypto (there’s some fine print we’ll get to in a second), with the 25 people who hold the most invited to a private reception and a “Special VIP” tour of the White House. The website includes a disclaimer that reads, “This Tour is being arranged by Fight Fight Fight LLC,” a company which appears to be owned by one of Trump’s friends, Bill Zanker, the founder of The Learning Annex education company.
The website also claims that “President Trump is appearing at the dinner as a guest and not soliciting any funds for it,” which appears to be another effort to insulate Trump from criticism. But just in case it wasn’t clear that Trump is intimately involved, the dinner will be held May 22 at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C.
The $TRUMP crypto website notes that people who want the opportunity to be attend the dinner must first register to appear on the “leaderboard.” People who want to register will need to connect their crypto wallet to Trump’s website, where their holdings will appear on the leaderboard.
“From April 23 to May 12, hold as much $TRUMP as you can. Your average holdings during this period will determine your ranking. The more $TRUMP you hold—and the longer you hold it—the higher Your Ranking will be,” the website reads.
The website includes bizarrely amateurish images of Trump. They’re so bad, in fact, that it’s difficult to tell whether they’re intentionally awful.
And while everything about this seems nakedly corrupt, it’s not clear whether anyone could possibly put a stop to it. Oddly enough, buying access to the U.S. president in such a public way may actually work to Trump’s advantage.
Whenever news leaks about something the Trump regime is doing behind closed doors, there are often headlines that make it out to be a scandal. But when Trump does things out in the open there seems to be less heat. For example, it was recently revealed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz were sharing highly sensitive military information on Signal, a commercial messaging app not approved for classified data. The fact that it was something not out in the open seemed to make it more of a scandal than when Trump himself declares he’s going to just ignore a lawful directive, like his refusal to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador.
Trump was long a skeptic of cryptocurrency before he got in on the action himself. And many in the crypto community thought he would be friendly to their interests before he was elected. But there have been mixed reactions to Trump’s actions in the crypto sphere since he took office. Many bitcoin enthusiasts were disappointed when Trump launched his own coin, having been hopeful that he might help top coins like bitcoin and ethereum instead.
Trump appointed David Sacks as a “crypto czar,” but his actions have also gotten mixed reviews. Some were disappointed when it turned out that the Trump regime’s strategic crypto reserve would not involve the U.S. federal government buying a bunch of bitcoin and instead would just mean the feds would hold on to crypto seized through litigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Previously, the government would sell seized crypto, which can drive down the price. Holding on to that crypto indefinitely helps artificially inflate the price but spending federal money to buy up all that fake money would push it up even higher.
On the “plus” side according to crypto folks, the DOJ under Trump has announced it would massively scale back enforcement of crypto-related crimes. So if you were hoping to pull a bunch of crypto scams, it really is a Golden Age, as our fascist president would say.
The price of $TRUMP went up 60% after news of the private dinners first broke Wednesday and currently sits at a price of about $14, according to CoinMarketCap. Launched just a few days before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the cryptocurrency shot up in price at launch too, peaking at over $75. But the price steadily eroded over the past three months as it became clear the crypto was overwhelmingly held by a collection of Trump-affiliated companies. The Trump Organization and Fight Fight Fight LLC own 80% of the coins, which are being unlocked on a schedule first announced three months ago. It just so happens that a huge chunk of those coins held by Trump-linked businesses were unlocked last week.
