By Agreeing to Attend a Dinner With the Largest Investors in His Own-Brand Cryptocurrency, Donald Trump Transformed the TRUMP Coin

Donald Trump’s agreement to attend a dinner with the largest investors in his own-brand cryptocurrency has transformed the TRUMP coin into something else entirely: a means of access to the sitting president.

As a consequence, Trump could find himself at odds with constitutional prohibitions of bribery and corruption, experts claim.

Trump’s announcement of the dinner on April 23, has been met with a trading frenzy that, on paper, added hundreds of millions of dollars to the president’s net worth. Two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization, a conglomerate owned by the president, control 80 percent of the total supply of the coin, which shot up in price by almost 60 percent after the announcement. Those subsidiaries also profit from any surge in trading volume as rent-seeking intermediaries.

However, the dinner maneuver may yet have political consequences for Trump. In creating the opportunity for anybody with sufficient wealth to purchase an audience, Trump risks falling foul of a part of the US Constitution—the emoluments clauses—that prohibit the president from accepting gifts or financial compensation from foreign and domestic state actors. In a worst-case scenario for the president, the potential for negative optics could add fuel to calls for his impeachment.

“Trump has built an entire life prodding the border of what a powerful person can get away with,” claims Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project, an organization that seeks to scrutinize the behavior of elected officials. “But at some point in time, he could push a little too far and it comes back on him. This [dinner] has the possibility of being that.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump announced his coin on January 18, a few days before his inauguration. At the time, he pitched it as a memecoin, a type of asset whose only purpose is to enable financial speculation. The price of memecoins tends to whipsaw dramatically with swings in public sentiment towards the person, meme, or concept they are based upon.

The dinner gambit puts the TRUMP coin in a different class entirely. In establishing an explicit quid pro quo—a large investment in exchange for an audience—the maneuver has effectively turned TRUMP into a utility coin, an asset that bestows on holders some perk or advantage.

That change was immediately felt in the markets, when the price of TRUMP surged in the hour after the dinner was announced. The expectation of further opportunities to spend time with Trump may continue to prop up the price.

“The door to utility has been opened. The market will expect further utility to come from holding that coin,” says Nathan van der Heyden, head of business development at crypto company Aragon. “Before, you were speculating on a TRUMP coin with no utility. Now you’re speculating on future access to Trump. That has to be worth a bit more money.”

The act of transmuting his cryptocurrency into a utility coin is unlikely to have immediate regulatory implications for Trump. In February, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the financial regulator that policed the crypto industry most tightly, made clear that it does not consider memecoins to fall within its jurisdiction. Likewise, during Trump’s first term, the agency reached a similar conclusion about utility coins.