An exclusive dinner for the 220 biggest investors in Donald Trump cryptocurrency: the US president is not only making headlines with his business dealings, he is also earning billions of dollars.

GD Culture Group is a small company with eight employees that distributes content for the video platform TikTok. It has "connections to China" and made no revenue last year

The small company GD Culture Group, which has eight employees and "connections to China," made no revenue last year, according to the New York Times (NYT).

However, the group announced its intention to invest no less than 300 million dollars in Bitcoin and the meme coin $Trump. The US president only launched the latter cryptocurrency in January, just three days before his inauguration.

Whether the company follows up its announcement with words or not, the fact is that it is worthwhile for the well-heeled to invest money in the Trump family's business.

It was announced last month that the White House is planning a dinner for the 220 most important Trump Coin investors. Many of them apparently come from abroad, according to the NYT: countries such as Mexico, Singapore and Australia are mentioned.

While donations to Trump's campaign are banned, investments in Trump's private businesses run under the radar. This was already the case during his first term in office, when, for example, potent clients from the Middle East rented entire floors in the 78-year-old's hotels for weeks.

The investor dinner took place on May 22 at Trump's golf hotel in Potomac Falls, Virginia. The 25 people who bought the most $Trump were personally "received" by New Yorkers in the process, the "Guardian" knows. The invitees paid a total of 148 million dollars for the Republican's cryptocurrency.

"Trump is marketing access to himself as a way to profit from his meme coin," said legal expert Richard Briffault. "People are paying to meet Trump and he is the supreme regulator. That's doubly corrupt. It's unprecedented. I don't think there's been anything like it in American history."

"Trump's crypto plans are deeply corrupt," said Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley. "He is selling access to his government and enriching himself in the process." Together with party colleagues, he is now demanding that the White House reveal who was present at this dinner in Virginia.

Trump's spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has emphasized that her boss is abiding by all the rules that apply to the president with regard to conflicts of interest: "And I think the American public believes that it is absurd to suggest that this president is profiting from the presidency."

He added that Trump was holding the event on his "personal time": "It's not a White House dinner," Leavitt said. Lawyer Larry Noble from Amrican University disagrees: "Trump's cryptocurrency dealings appear to present the greatest conflicts of interest and opportunities for corruption that any president has ever faced."

The problem is that the Trumps not only trade in the presidential meme coin, but they also make deals via the 60 percent family-owned company World Liberty Financial. The United Arab Emirates wants to invest in this cryptocurrency company, which was founded in the autumn.

The investment, from which the Trumps will benefit, is worth two billion dollars to Abu Dhabi. By mid-March, the family is said to have earned 2.9 billion dollars with cryptocurrencies, according to calculations by the NGO State Democracy Defenders Action. The sum is likely to be significantly higher today.

The group writes that there is no end in sight to the president's actions: "Trump appears to have positioned himself to profit as much as possible by adopting a less aggressive regulatory and enforcement program than his predecessor."

The biggest investor in Trump's cryptocurrencies serves as a negative example: The Chinese Justin Sun has put 20 million dollars into $Trump and invested 75 million dollars in World Liberty Financial, which is why he was also present at the dinner on May 22, the Guardian knows.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued Sun for fraudulent manipulation of the market in connection with cryptocurrencies. After Trump relaxed oversight, the case has been on hold since the beginning of the year. There are said to have been talks about shelving the case.

How are the Trumps still benefiting from the presidency? Melania Trump, for example, is said to be earning 28 million dollars from a film about the First Lady that Jeff Bezos is financing, according to the New York Times. The sum that the family has collected with cryptocurrencies is estimated at 320 million dollars.

In addition, there are gifts such as the luxury plane from Qatar, which is worth more than all the gifts that US presidents have ever received from abroad put together. "Forbes" estimates Donald Trump's wealth at 5.1 billion dollars in March, which is 1.2 billion more than in the previous year, when the 78-year-old was still campaigning.

These figures set alarm bells ringing among experts: "I've been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning," says political scientist and author Michael Johnston, referring to the Trump family's fat businesses