Ten days from now, 220 crypto investors will sit down to a lavish three-course dinner and enjoy “stunning views of the Potomac river” with US president Donald Trump at his 600-acre golf club in Washington, DC. To earn an invitation, all they had to do was buy a boatload of the president’s personal crypto coin.
The dinner was announced on April 23 by CIC Digital LLC—a subsidiary of a conglomerate owned by the Trump family—and Fight Fight Fight LLC, which together control 80 percent of the TRUMP coin supply. They pitched it as “the most exclusive invitation in the world,” giving lucky attendees the opportunity to “hear first-hand president Trump talk about the future of crypto.”
The attendees were selected based on who had spent the most on TRUMP and held their coins the longest between the announcement date and the deadline at 1:30 pm ET today. The identities of the investors who vied for a place are concealed behind leaderboard usernames and alphanumeric crypto wallet addresses.
To win a seat under the crystal chandeliers of the great ballroom at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, the 220 qualifying attendees had to hold or purchase at least 4,196 units of the TRUMP coin—worth about $55,000 at the time of writing, WIRED calculated.
The 25 largest holders will enjoy an even more intimate experience, including a VIP tour and an “exclusive reception before dinner with YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT,” according to the website. To qualify for the reception, these VIPs held around 325,000 TRUMP coins on average, worth $4.3 million as of 1:30 pm ET.
The biggest spender, an investor going by the name Sun, topped the leaderboard with around 1.43 million TRUMP coins, worth over $19 million. (The wallet going by Sun sold nearly $1 million worth of TRUMP before the contest ended.) Many have speculated whether the wallet belongs to Chinese born billionaire Justin Sun; according to a New York Times report, the coins belong to an exchange for which Sun is a global adviser. Sun did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite the scoring system favoring investors who held TRUMP coins the longest, a number of qualifying VIPs entered the competition at a late stage. In sixth place on the leaderboard, an investor going by the pseudonym Woo bought 1,000,001 coins (now worth over $13 million) on May 6 and sat on them until the end of the competition.
At the bottom end of the leaderboard, smaller investors fought over the final remaining dinner places. One investor going by the username hihi almost doubled their TRUMP holdings in a series of purchases in the hours before the deadline, earning themselves a seat at the dinner.
Conversely, having comfortably secured their places, around 35 of the 220 gala attendees had already sold off nearly all their TRUMP holdings by Monday morning, presumably to shield themselves from any potential drop in value. Analysts had predicted a slump in price after the spaces at the dinner were confirmed and the immediate incentive to hold the coin evaporated.
VIP investors with the usernames Top and ivo sold 200,000 (worth almost $2.7 million) and 427,568 (worth almost $5.7 million) ahead of the deadline, respectively.
Trump first announced his crypto coin on January 17, three days before his 2025 inauguration. He pitched it as a memecoin, a type of coin used almost exclusively for financial speculation. Because memecoins do not generate revenue nor have any underlying business model, their price tends to fluctuate wildly with swings in public sentiment toward the person, meme, or concept they are based upon.
In the days after trading began, the 20 percent of TRUMP coins released into circulation surged in value to $14 billion. On paper, Trump’s net worth had increased by tens of billions of dollars almost overnight.
The value of the coin has since dropped by more than 80 percent from its peak. But when Trump announced the dinner on April 23, it prompted another trading frenzy, causing the price of the memecoin to surge. As market intermediaries, Fight Fight Fight and CIC Digital likely made hundreds of thousands of dollars in trading fees.
Since its launch, critics have cast the TRUMP memecoin as an unethical “money grab”—an abuse of Trump’s office for the sake of self-enrichment. They have also expressed concern that the coin could be used to discreetly transfer wealth to the Trump family. By making a large investment and driving up the price of the coin, foreign powers and other politically motivated actors could try to curry favor with the president, the argument goes.
In establishing an explicit quid pro quo—a large investment in exchange for access to Trump—the dinner rekindled those fears. “He is granting audiences to people who buy the memecoin that directly enriches him,” said Democratic senator Jon Ossoff in a town hall meeting on April 25.
The identities of the investors who won a seat at the gala dinner are largely unknown. The largest holders include investors going by the usernames Woo, REKT, GAnt, and CASE. The White House and the event organizers did not respond when asked whether the attendee list will be made public.
Other investors have chosen to reveal their identities, however, seizing upon the competition as a branding opportunity. The second-place holder, MeCo or “MemeCore,” asked users on X to send $TRUMP to their wallet to boost their ranking, promising a full refund at the end of the contest. “See you guys at Trump’s Gala,” added Rudy Rong, chief business development officer at MemeCore, who comes from a billionaire Chinese family.
In Congress, Democrat lawmakers are attempting to push through legislation that would prevent elected officials from releasing their own memecoins, to offset the risk that these coins could facilitate bribery or open the door to foreign influences. Though the MEME Act stands little chance of being written into law because of the Republican congressional majority and the strength of Trump’s hold over his party, it signals growing discontent over the president’s involvements in cryptocurrency.
“It provides a cloak for payments from bad actors to elected officials and their family,” Democratic congressman Sam Liccardo, who introduced the MEME Act, told WIRED. “The point is that those who are benefiting may include individuals who do not have America’s best interests at heart.”
