WASHINGTON (AP) -- It seems like a triumph for a cryptocurrency industry that has long sought mainstream acceptance

Top investors in one of President Donald Trump's crypto projects dining with him at his luxury golf club in Northern Virginia

WASHINGTON (AP) — It seems like a triumph for a cryptocurrency industry that has long sought mainstream acceptance: Top investors in one of President Donald Trump's crypto projects are having dinner with him at his luxury golf club in Northern Virginia, on the heels of the Senate advancing key pro-crypto legislation and while bitcoin prices soar.

But Thursday night's gathering for the 220 biggest investors in the $TRUMP meme coin has raised uncomfortable questions about potentially shadowy buyers using the anonymity of the internet to buy anonymity with the president.

While critics charge that Trump is using the power of the presidency to boost profits for his family business, even some pro-Trump crypto enthusiasts worry that the president's push into meme coins isn't helping their efforts to establish the credibility, stability and legitimacy they had thought his administration would bring to their businesses.

After feeling unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, the industry has quickly become a dominant political force, donating huge sums to help Trump and crypto-friendly lawmakers. But that's also served to tether the industry — sometimes uncomfortably — to a president who is using crypto as a platform to make money for his brand in unprecedented ways.

“It's distasteful and an unnecessary distraction,” said Nic Carter, a Trump supporter and partner at the crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures, who said the president is “hugging us to death” with his private crypto businesses. “We would much rather that he passes common sense legislation and leave it at that.”

At the swanky Crypto Ball held down the street from the White House three days before he took office on Jan. 20, Trump announced the creation of the meme coin $TRUMP as a way for his supporters to “have fun.”

Meme coins are the crypto sector's black sheep. They are often created as a joke, with no real utility and prone to extremely wild price swings that tend to enrich a small group of insiders at the expense of less sophisticated investors.

The president's meme coin is different, however, and has a clear utility: access to Trump. The top 25 investors of $TRUMP were invited to a private reception with the president Thursday, with the top four getting $100,000 crypto-themed and Trump-branded watches.

Trump's meme coin saw an initial spike in value, followed by a steep drop. Its creators, which include an entity controlled by the Trump Organization, have made hundreds of millions of dollars by collecting fees on trades.

First lady Melania Trump has her own meme coin, and Trump's sons, Eric and Don Jr. — who are running the Trump Organization while their father is president — announced they are partnering with an existing firm to create a crypto mining company.

The Trump family also holds about a 60 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project that provides yet another avenue where investors are buying in and enriching the president's relatives. World Liberty has launched its own stablecoin, USD1. The project got a boost recently when World Liberty announced an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates would be using $2 billion worth of USD1 to purchase a stake in Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Stablecoins have values pegged to fixed assets like the U.S. dollar. Issuers profit by collecting the interest on the Treasury bonds and other assets used to back the stablecoins.

Crypto is now one of the most significant sources of the Trump family's wealth.

"He's becoming a salesman-in-chief," said James Thurber, an American University professor emeritus who has long studied and taught about corruption around the world. "It allows for huge conflicts of interest."

"I'm a big crypto fan," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One during his recent trip to the Middle East. "I've been that from the beginning, right from the campaign."

That wasn't always true. During his first term, Trump posted in July 2019 that cryptocurrencies were "not money" and had value that was "highly volatile and based on thin air."

"Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade," he added then.

Even after leaving office in 2021, Trump told Fox Business Network that bitcoin, the world's most popular cryptocurrency, "seems like a scam."

Trump began to shift during a crypto event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in May 2024, receiving assurances that industry backers would spend lavishly to get him reelected. Another major milestone came last June, when Trump attended a high-dollar fundraiser at the San Francisco home of David Sacks.

He further warmed to the industry weeks later, when Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with bitcoin miners. The following month, he addressed a major crypto conference in Nashville, promising to make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the planet."

Those close to Trump, including his sons and billionaire