Top owners of President Donald Trump’s crypto meme coin will soon be invited to dine with the president at his Washington-area golf club, the company behind the venture announced Wednesday.
At the “intimate private” dinner, Trump will discuss the future of crypto, according to the page on his meme coin’s website promoting the event. It’s another prominent example of Trump mixing politics and his personal business; a Trump-owned company owns a significant amount of the meme coin.
“$TRUMP Power! The Biggest and Most Important $TRUMP Holders will Proudly have a Gala Dinner with the President,” the site proclaimed. “Will You Be One of Them?”
The memcoin’s price surged following the announcement on Wednesday.
The memecoin’s top 220 average holders from April 23 to May 12 will gain an invite to the dinner. The top 25 will meet the president at a private VIP reception and “Special VIP” tour. Earlier on Wednesday, the tour was advertised as a “Special VIP White House Tour,” but the reference to the White House has since been struck from the website.
Trump launched his memecoin just days before his January inauguration. Ethics watchdogs condemned the move, which comes as Trump builds a far rosier relationship with the cryptocurrency industry than his predecessor, Joe Biden.
The memecoin is just one of several ways in which Trump and his family are positioning themselves to cash in on crypto. Trump’s sons launched a separate crypto company last year called World Liberty Financial, which is launching a digital token known as a stablecoin that is pegged to the value of the dollar.
The Trump family crypto ventures could all stand to benefit from industry-backed crypto legislation that is moving on Capitol Hill, but they have also complicated the political dynamics around the issue. Trump’s crypto ties have angered industry-friendly Democrats, whose support is needed for legislation to clear the Senate. House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.), who has pushed for years to enact new rules that would benefit crypto, said last month that the family’s crypto ventures have made his work in Congress “more complicated.”
The president in March also signed an executive order empowering the federal government to build a “strategic reserve” of cryptocurrency assets it seizes through law enforcement proceedings.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ethical implications of the dinner.
But “this Tour is being arranged by Fight Fight Fight LLC,” read a disclaimer on the page. “President Trump is appearing at the dinner as a guest and not soliciting any funds for it.”