The top 25 holders of Donald Trump’s personal memecoin, $TRUMP

The top 25 holders of Donald Trump’s personal memecoin, $TRUMP, have been decided — and they’ll soon head to the Trump National Golf Club

The top 25 holders of Donald Trump’s personal memecoin, $TRUMP, have been decided — and they’ll soon head to the Trump National Golf Club in Washington DC to attend a private dinner with the US President.

But what did these people pay for this extraordinary level of access to the US head of state?

According to $TRUMP’s official leaderboard, the top 25 token holders held an average of just under US$4.8 million (AUD$7.5m) at the time of the token snapshot. This figure doesn’t necessarily reflect what the holders initially paid to acquire their holdings, as the price of $TRUMP has fluctuated enormously since its launch.

The average is also skewed by very large holdings — the leaderboard at the time of the snapshot shows the top user, identified as ‘Sun’, held over 1.4 million $TRUMP, currently valued at around US$18 million (AUD$28m).

The top holders were calculated using a ‘time weighted’ formula. According to the $TRUMP website, holdings were calculated “based on both the amount and duration of your $TRUMP holdings. The longer you hold the higher your weighted score becomes.”

While the top 220 $TRUMP holders are invited to attend the private dinner with Donald Trump, only the top 25 are considered VIPs. VIPs get access to a ‘private VIP reception’ with Donald Trump and will also be taken on a ‘special tour’.

Justin Sun Suspected to Be Top $TRUMP Holder

The $TRUMP leaderboard includes not just the wallet address and holding size of each holder, but also their username. The top holder’s username is ‘Sun’, leading to speculation that the largest $TRUMP holder is none other than Tron founder, Justin Sun.

Sun is also the largest single investor in the Trump family’s DeFi project, World Liberty Financial (WLFI). Curiously, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ‘paused’ its case against Sun in February, just after the crypto tycoon invested US$75 million (AUD$117.6m) into WLFI. Sun was facing charges for market manipulation, fraud and issuing unregistered securities related to Tron’s native token TRX.

Later this year, a group of Democratic senators introduced legislation to ban senior government officials and their families from creating or promoting cryptocurrencies. The move is seen as a direct effort to stop what the Democrats see as blatant crypto profiteering by Trump Administration insiders, most notably by the president himself.

The senators stated that the bill is "intended to prevent any potential conflicts of interest or the appearance of impropriety."

The bill, if passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden, would also impose restrictions on government officials engaging in crypto-related activities and require the administration to conduct a study on the macroeconomic and national security implications of cryptocurrencies.

The bill has been tabled as a response to reports that members of the Trump administration, including his son, Donald Trump Jr, and daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, are promoting their own memecoins.

Earlier this year, Trump Jr began shilling his own token, named "Jr" on Telegram, while Lara Trump promoted her own token, "LaraCoin." Both tokens have since been heavily touted on social media, despite having no clear utility or value proposition.

The news comes as a group of House Democrats expressed concern over a recently passed amendment to a major economic bill that could create a loophole for former President Donald Trump to personally profit from his name and likeness in a cryptocurrency project.

The amendment, which was added to the bill by a Republican senator, would allow senior government officials to participate in cryptocurrency projects if they are approved by the government and if the officials' role is "limited and ministerial."

However, the senators argued that the amendment could be exploited by Trump, who is planning to launch his own line of collectible NFTs later this year.

The senators said in a statement that they are "deeply troubled" by the amendment and believe that it "would create a clear and present danger to the integrity of our government."

"We urge our colleagues to reject this amendment and any other amendments that would seek to grant special privileges to senior government officials or their families," the senators said.

The move by the Democratic senators comes as the cryptocurrency industry is facing increasing scrutiny from regulators. The SEC has been particularly active in cracking down on cryptocurrency projects that it deems to be unregistered securities offerings.

The senators' bill is also likely to face opposition from Republicans, who have generally been more supportive of the cryptocurrency industry.