President Donald Trump rewarded top investors in one of his cryptocurrency projects with a swanky dinner on Thursday night, an event that showed the ascendance of an emerging financial industry — and also the president's willingness to mix public office with personal profit.
Some 220 of the biggest investors in the $TRUMP meme coin were invited to Trump's luxury golf club in Northern Virginia, where they dined on filet mignon and halibut. According to participants' posts on social media, Trump spoke for about half an hour before dancing to the song “YMCA.”
Despite the White House insisting that Trump would be attending the event “in his personal time,” he stood behind a lectern with the presidential seal as he touted an industry that's generating profits for his family business.
After feeling unfairly targeted under President Joe Biden, the crypto industry has quickly become a powerful political force, donating huge sums to help Trump and friendly lawmakers. The U.S. Senate is advancing key pro-crypto legislation while bitcoin prices soar.
However, even some pro-Trump crypto enthusiasts worry that the president's personal involvement may be undermining their efforts to establish credibility and stability for the industry.
“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.”
As the president uses crypto as a platform to make money for his brand in unprecedented ways, it's also creating an opportunity for potentially shadowy buyers to use the anonymity of the internet to buy access to the president. The lack of transparency was evident on a poster board at the dinner, where participants signed a ranking of top investors. Some used their real names; others used pseudonyms.
No media was allowed into the dinner, and the president was at his golf club for only about an hour. Protesters gathered outside the club holding signs that said “stop crypto corruption” and “no corrupt fools.”
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Trump said the event was “good, very good” as he returned to the White House.
Concerns about Trump’s crypto ventures predate Inauguration Day
Three days before Trump took office on Jan. 20, he announced the creation of the $TRUMP meme coin at the fancy Crypto Ball held down the street from the White House. He described it 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. In addition to Thursday's dinner, the top 25 were invited to a private reception with the president, 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% 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.”
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“I’m a big crypto fan,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One during last week’s trip to the Middle East. “I’ve been that from the beginning, right from the campaign.”
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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.
Those close to Trump, including his sons and billionaire Elon Musk, helped further push his embrace of the industry. Sacks is now the Trump administration’s crypto czar, and many Cabinet members — including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — have long been enthusiastic crypto boosters.
“I don’t have faith in the dollar,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a 2023 interview. “I’m bullish on bitcoin.”
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Many top crypto backers were naturally wary of traditional politics, but gravitated toward Trump last year. They bristled at how Biden's Securities and Exchange Commission aggressively brought civil suits against several major crypto companies.
Since Trump took office, many such cases have been dropped or paused, including one alleging that Justin Sun, a China-born crypto entrepreneur, and his company engaged in market manipulation and paid celebrities for undisclosed promotions.
Sun, who once paid $6.2 million for a piece of art involving a banana taped to a wall, and then ate the banana, helped the Trumps start World Liberty Financial with an early $75 million investment.
Sun has disclosed on social media that he is the biggest holder of $TRUMP meme coins and is attending Thursday’s dinner.
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“I’m excited to connect with everyone, talk crypto, and discuss the future of our industry,” Sun said in advance.
He posted a video of Trump entering the private reception.
“Did you get to see the helicopter?” Trump said.
“Yeah! Super cool,” Sun responded.
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Trump has signed executive orders promoting the industry, including calls to create a government bitcoin reserve. In March, Trump convened the first cryptocurrency summit at the White House.
But some of the industry’s biggest names, often brash and outspoken, have kept mostly mum on Trump’s meme coins and other projects.
“It’s not my place to really comment on President Trump’s activity,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said at a recent public event.
Meanwhile, a top legislative priority for crypto-backers, a bill clarifying how digital assets are to be regulated, has advanced in the Senate. But some Democrats have tried to stall other pro-crypto legislation over the president's personal dealings — and see the dinner as a particularly egregious case.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said the gathering was “in effect, putting a ‘for sale’ sign on the White House.”
“It’s auctioning off access,” Blumenthal said on a Thursday press call.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president is attending “in his personal time.” The White House has also said it has nothing to do with Trump's meme coin.