Fifty of the $TRUMP memecoin dinner invitees hold crypto assets named for Pepe the Frog

Fifty of the $TRUMP memecoin dinner invitees hold crypto assets named for Pepe the Frog, which is known as an alt-right symbol

Fifty of the guests invited to a dinner with Donald Trump due to their holdings of the $TRUMP memecoin are also known to hold crypto assets named with terms that include Pepe the Frog—which is used as an alt-right symbol—swastikas, a racial slur and references to anti-semitic ideology, according to an analysis by CREW. This adds to concerns raised by the dinner, which is being seen as a naked attempt by the president to profit from his office.

The dinner, which is being billed on the $TRUMP website as “[t]he most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World,” will take place on May 22 at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. The top 220 time-weighted holders of $TRUMP between April 23 and May 12 will be invited to the event, pending required background checks, and the top 25 of those will be granted additional access through an “exclusive reception” with the president before the dinner and a “VIP tour,” which reports say will take place at the White House.

$TRUMP is hosted on Solana, one of several blockchains that allow users to mint and name their own coins. These highly volatile tokens, which tend to depreciate in value, generate interest from traders through their use of pop culture memes and cultural events. Many of the wallets ranked on the Trump leaderboard hold dozens of these so-called memecoins.

As of May 12—the day the winners of the dinner invitations were finalized—the most common named token among the wallets on the list was Pepe the Frog, with 45 of the wallets holding assets named for the character. However, these holdings may have changed since they were last analyzed.

Originating from a 2005 web comic, Pepe the Frog’s association with the alt-right dates back to the 2016 election cycle, when users of the anonymous web forum 4chan began using him as a symbol of white nationalism. Since then, Pepe has appeared as a symbol at the 2017 Unite the Right rally and the January 6 insurrection, where participants wore helmets and masks featuring the image. Followers of the Christian nationalist and white supremacist Nick Fuentes also refer to themselves as Groypers, which is a variation of the Pepe character. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also qualified Pepe as a hate symbol in 2016, though it has noted it’s not always used that way.

Pepe Coin, a popular token, was launched on Ethereum earlier this year. Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase drew criticism from traders for discussing Pepe’s use by the alt-right in a newsletter that followed the coin’s launch, and later issued an apology. Among the coins held by the $TRUMP leaderboard wallets are many different iterations of the Pepe character; some, like Trump Pepe, are explicitly political, while others, like AIPEPE, are not. Ultimately, Pepe is not always associated with white nationalism, and an owner’s interest in a coin named for the character may have no bearing on their political views. Nonetheless, it is disturbing that so many guests of the president own crypto assets named for a symbol with known white nationalist associations.

Nine of the wallets—including some that hold Pepe-themed assets—were found to hold assets whose names are unambiguously racist or anti-semitic. For example, one token is named “FUCK THE JEWS,” while another is simply the n-word. Four others are variations on the word “swastika,” such as “Swasticoin” and “Swastika Coin.”

It is not clear to what extent the holders of these assets on the $TRUMP time-weighted leaderboard intended to acquire them. For example, it is possible to automate purchases of any tokens that meet specific criteria, a strategy that wouldn’s necessarily take into account the name of the assets being purchased. Furthermore, even if the buyers did knowingly buy the tokens, they could have done so solely as a bet on their value in an arbitrage strategy, indifferent to the name of the asset.

The difficult-to-trace nature of crypto transactions means it is impossible to know who will ultimately be attending the dinner. However, one investor, Justin Sun—the controversial, Chinese-born crypto CEO who last November for a $30 million purchase of crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLF), a Trump-backed crypto venture—has said he plans to attend the private dinner. At the time the time-weighted snapshots used to determine the dinner invitation winners were finalized, the wallet that is typically affiliated with Sun was holding ten Pepe-themed assets, but none containing any of the other more incendiary terms CREW searched for.

As previously reported by Bloomberg, more than half of the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP token are likely to be located outside of the U.S. While presidents are largely exempt from the federal ethics laws that govern conflicts