Crypto may never be the same.
With protestors outside and around 220 of his top memecoin holders inside, Donald Trump on Thursday hosted one of the most extraordinary events in the history of the presidency.
And Justin Sun, the billionaire founder of the Tron blockchain and the top buyer with $40 million of $TRUMP, was in the centre of it all.
“I really appreciate, like, everything the Trump Administration has done to our industry,” Sun, clad in a tuxedo, can be seen telling the audience in a video shared on X.
“Basically, like, 100 days ago, they are going after crypto people everywhere.”
Trump salad
Dining on filet mignon, halibut and a “Trump organic field green salad‚” the president’s guests included Lamar Odom, a former NBA player turned memecoin creator, and Magic Eden CEO Jack Lu.
Vincent Liu, the chief investment officer at Kronos Research, a high frequency trading firm in crypto founded in Taiwan, also attended according to The New York Times.
So, too, did SuKyung Na, the chief operating officer at Hyperithm, a digital asset management company based in Tokyo and Seoul, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, protesters gathered outside the Trump National Golf Club in northern Virginia and chanted “shame” and waved palcards, including one that read “Stop Trump’s crypto corruption,” according to videos shared online.
“This is the crypto corruption club,” shouted Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon. “This is like the Mount Everest of corruption.”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday there was nothing wrong with the dinner.
“It’s absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency,” she said. “This president was incredibly successful before giving it all up to serve our country publicly.”
‘We would much rather that he passes common sense legislation and leave it at that.'
Nic Carter
While presidents have frequently courted corporate leaders and wealthy campaign donors, they have rarely, if ever, hosted events with the apparent goal of self-enrichment.
Trump’s memecoin, which has a market value of $2.8 billion, is controlled by two entities with close ties to the Trump family — CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight. They own 80% of the president’s memecoin, according to its website.
The groups benefit from any increase in the token’s value.
But they also profit from trading activity and have raked in an estimated $320 million from trading fees, according to blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis.
This is why even leading crypto voices are dismayed by Trump’s memecoin, as well as other ventures such as World Liberty Financial, a purported DeFi project that recently issued a stablecoin.
“It’s distasteful and an unnecessary distraction,” Nic Carter, a Trump supporter and partner at the crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures, told ABC News.
Carter 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.”
Brazen promotion
The president, who has hocked everything from condominiums to steaks to gold crypto sneakers, has never shied away from brazen promotion.
And on Thursday night, he welcomed his memecoin holders with the tacit promise that under his leadership the industry would get everything it wanted from Washington.
“There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto,” Trump told his guests, according to The New York Times. “And we’re honoured to be working on helping everybody here.”
Yet critics say the memecoin is a pay-to-play scheme that enables firms to essentially buy favour from the White House.
At least two Chinese firms at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq have announced plans to buy hundreds of millions of dollars in $TRUMP, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
And Freight Technologies, a Houston-based logistics firm, told DL News it was buying up to $20 million worth of the memecoins to “draw attention” to its struggling business.
Golf club stories
The Trump memecoin’s primary purpose appears to be pretty straightforward — making money for the president and his partners.
When the dinner was announced in April, it certainly delivered as $TRUMP skyrocketed 60% in value.
On Thursday evening, the president appeared to be enjoying himself as he regaled his fellow crypto entrepreneurs with stories of his golf club.
“I had this, I guess, probably about 20 years. I bought it from a group of people that – they didn’t know the [Potomac] river was there, practically,” Trump said in a brief video from the event shared with DL News.
“The trees were so thick you couldn’t see the river. I was able to get the trees and take them down, which a lot of environmentalists don’t love.”
But if the president was hoping the event would pump $TRUMP, he was probably disappointed.
The token skidded 1.7% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
With reporting by Liam Kelly.
Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent.
