Trump cryptocurrency tokenized as investors spend nearly $2M to win dinner with the president

Investors just spent nearly $200 million on President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency token in a mad dash to win the right to attend a private dinner with him next week.

Investors who dashed to spend nearly $2 billion on President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency token in hopes of winning an invitation to a private dinner with him will have to wait until next week to see if they scored an invite.

Now, with the window for the invitations closed, some are already beginning to cash out.

At least 34 of the top 220 investors in the $TRUMP memecoin who are in line to be invited to attend the May 22 dinner at Trump's golf club in Virginia had sold most of their stakes in the token by Monday evening, hours after the cutoff to be considered for the guest list, according to an analysis from crypto intelligence company Inca Digital.

The selling suggests that even those who spent weeks jockeying for an invitation may be worried about the potential for a sudden sell-off in the president's memecoin — an inherently risky type of collectible crypto token that can be prone to sudden surges and declines. The $TRUMP token plunged shortly after the cutoff Monday, before eventually jumping back up. It was up nearly 9 percent over the prior 24 hours, as of Tuesday afternoon.

“I’m actually surprised it’s not going down more,” said Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at Arca, a crypto investment firm. “There’s really no reason to own it after May 12, because you’re already getting the value of it if you were buying it specifically for the [dinner].”

Memecoins are a type of collectible crypto asset that are often launched for entertainment purposes, and as a result, their prices can swing dramatically as investor interest ebbs and flows.

Launched just before Inauguration Day, the $TRUMP memecoin — whose logo features an image of Trump with his fist raised in the air and the words “Fight Fight Fight” — has been a flashpoint of controversy in Washington since its debut. As the dinner has neared, the concerns have reached a high pitch. Democrats, government ethics experts and crypto lobbyists say the gathering could enable corporate interests and foreign actors to try to use the token to curry favor with the administration. Even some Republicans voiced unease, including Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, one of the crypto industry's staunchest allies in Congress.

The memecoins are generally unregulated: In February, the Securities and Exchange Commission's staff waved off any claim of authority over the collectibles, saying that most fall outside the Wall Street regulator's remit.

The White House has struck back at the criticism by arguing that Trump is following the appropriate ethics rules. At a briefing last week, press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it "ridiculous" to suggest that Trump "is doing anything for his own benefit."

"President Trump is compliant with all conflict-of-interest rules, and only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media," she said in a statement.

Neither the Trump Organization nor the company behind the memecoin responded to requests for comment Tuesday.

The president's memecoin is predominantly held by two entities: CIC Digital LLC, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and Fight Fight Fight LLC, according to its website. The companies also collect fees whenever the memecoin is traded, which has proven to be a particularly lucrative part of the deal. Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis recently estimated that the Trump family and its partners have made more than $320 million in trading fees since the memecoin launched, more than $1 million of which came in the wake of the dinner announcement.

Billed as an "Intimate Private" gathering with Trump, the dinner's unveiling set off a wave of buying activity in the memecoin — reviving it from a more than 90 percent slide.

Investors spent about $1.7 billion buying the memecoin following the dinner announcement April 23, according to Inca Digital.

The top investors who scored an invitation to the dinner were determined based on how much of the memecoin they held and for how long during a nearly three-week period that ended Monday afternoon, meaning that some could have dumped the token beforehand. Indeed, blockchain records show that a crypto investor identified by the username "noah" — who was No. 25 out of the top 220 holders — sold their $TRUMP memecoins last week.

It's still unclear who bought the token and will be attending the dinner. Memecoin trading, like other digital assets, can be publicly tracked, but usually, the investors behind the activity are only identifiable by a long alphanumeric "wallet address." In addition to being in the top 220 holders, attendees of the memecoin dinner must pass a background check.

In the case of Trump's memecoin, a leaderboard on its website shows that