The price of Donald Trump's official meme coin (TRUMP) soared

The price of Donald Trump’s meme coin (TRUMP) shot up after the U.S. president promised a private gala dinner for the cryptocurrency’s top investors.

While this offer has been making headlines for weeks, several developments have surfaced with buy-ins, sell-offs, and endless calls for probes into what critics describe as a “stunt” and an “abuse of public office.”

Recently, one of the top whales with an automatic dinner invite dumped more than a million dollars worth of their TRUMP coin holdings for a profit.

This means that the whale is choosing to not only lock in profits, but also to skip out on the dinner and save money on the airfare and hotel money. Here are the details of this development.

A High-Stakes Dinner Invitation

The $TRUMP coin’s official website announced in late April, that the top 220 holders of the token will be invited to a black-tie optional gala dinner with President Trump on May 22 at his National Golf Club in Washington, D.C. More than this, the top 25 holders will also gain access to a “VIP reception” and a White House tour the following day.

This dinner was immediately billed as “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the world,” and immediately caught the attention of crypto investors.

Soon after this announcement, the TRUMP coin price jumped over 70% in value according to data from TradingView. This push caused its total market cap to hit roughly $2.7 billion.

At the time of the announcement, the 220th wallet had around $420 in holdings and so far, that figure has skyrocketed to over $18,000. As it stands, entry into the VIP event now requires holdings of more than $1.4 million.

Single Whale Dumps It All

While certain whales are scrambling to rake in as many TRUMP coins as possible, and make the cut for the dinner, one particular investor has done the opposite. This investor sold it all: for a profit.

According to reports, one of the top-5 investors deposited all 126,000 of their TRUMP meme coin holdings into Bybit. These tokens were worth around $1.65 million at a purchase price of less than $10.

The deposit price of this transaction was at $13.02, which means that if this whale had sold, they would have made a cool $420,000 in profit.

According to speculators, this move was a smart one from the whale, as they would have had to spend on travel, hotel and other expenses to attend the dinner.

Political and Legal Backlash

While the offer has been a windfall for some investors, it is quickly drawing political criticism.

For example, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have formally requested a federal ethics investigation.

Both of these figures sent a letter to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, questioning whether Trump is using cryptocurrency to sell access to his presidency, or engaging in what they described as “pay to play” corruption.

The white house has yet to comment on the matter, and the team behind the token has remained silent as well.

Interestingly, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reported that the Trump team earned nearly $900,000 in trading fees in just two days after the dinner announcement.

These fees are collected through the smart contract that powers the token and channels a percentage of each trade into wallets associated with the project’s creators.

So far, the Trump coin launch in January has seen over $324 million in fees generated until date, all of which have flowed to wallets controlled by Trump’s affiliates and the Trump Organization.