The flashy online announcement called him “the most exclusive invitation to the world”, an opportunity for “an intimate private dinner” with President Trump in his Golf club only for members in Virginia, followed by a tour of the White House.
A place would be reserved for each of the first 220 Investors in $ Trump, a cryptocurrency that Mr. Trump launched on the eve of his inauguration.
In a surprising escalation of the efforts of the Trump family to profit from Crypto, a website that promotes $ Trump, the so -called Memecoin of the president, announced on Wednesday that the major buyers of the coin would be invited to meet him. The effort was, in fact, an offer of access to the White House in exchange for an investment in one of the cryptocurrencies of Mr. Trump.
“Dinner with President Trump and the $ Trump community!” The invitation said. “Let the president know how many coins $ trump you own!”
For months, Trump's incursions in cryptocurrency created ethical conflicts with little previous in presidential history. While marketing digital currencies to the public, Trump has also appointed regulators who are reducing the application of cryptocurrencies and has asked for legislation that would increase the perspectives of the sector in the United States.
While the news of the invitation to the dinner spread on social media, the price of memecoin has increased by over 60 percent, suggesting that investors were hurrying to accumulate enough coins to qualify for a place for dinner.
“This is truly incredible,” said Corey Frayer, who supervised the policy of encryption for the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration. “They are making the pay-to-play agreement explicit.”
A commercial entity linked to Mr. Trump has a large tranche of coins, which means that the president personally prophesies every time the price increases, at least on paper. Trump and his commercial partners also collect commissions when the coins are exchanged, a manna that amounted to almost $ 100 million in the weeks following the coin debut in January.
Victoria Haneman, professor of law at Creighton University, said that the offer has raised concerns about the ways in which Mr. Trump and his activities “can maneuver to take profit from the presidency”.
At the beginning of this year, the century issued an official guide who says that Memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency based on an online joke or a mascot of celebrities, will not be subject to supervision of the agency. Crypto Skeptics has criticized politics as a risky move that could open the door to rampant fraud by Memecoin promoters.
As president, Trump has a wide immunity from the laws that regulate conflicts of interest, a escapade that has underlined in the past. The representatives of the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump Eric's son, who helps manage the Trump organization, sponsor of the $ Trump coin, refused to comment.
Once skeptical of cryptocurrency, Trump embraced digital currencies on the countryside of the countryside last year, while the cryptocurrency companies paid tens of millions of dollars to the 2024 elections.
In the autumn, Mr. Trump and his children, Donald Jr., Eric and Barron, said they had started a company, World Liberty Financial, who offered a digital currency called WLFI. So far $ 550 million of these coins have been sold, according to the company.
Not long after, the social media company of Trump, Trump Media & Technology Group, moved to offer financial products relating to cryptocurrencies to amateur investors and has announced a partnership with Crypto.com, a digital trading platform.
But Mr. Trump's memecoin feat has generated more attention.
Only three days before the inauguration, Mr. Trump published his social media website on Truth Social, which was selling the coin. Sales of $ Trump immediately increased, making the president elected a cryptographic billionaire on paper.
The memecoins tend to get up and fall quickly and the price of $ trump soon crater. Traders who had accumulated the coin have undergone more than $ 2 billion cumulative losses.
The announcement of the dinner appeared calculated to turn on more interest in coins.
When $ Trump was on sale in January, a large supply of coins was assigned to the supporters of the project. But the rules integrated into the offer prevented those insiders from selling any of the coins until last week, raising fears that they would try to download their participations and further drop the price of $ Trump.
Instead, the price gradually climbed over the days before the invitation was released and then increased while the announcement was going live.
On the Memecoin website, the promoters of $ Trump have created a ranking of the greatest investors of the coin, essentially an online game that allows buyers to keep track of their place in the rankings. The invitations for dinner would go to the “best 220 $ trump owners” between April 23 and May 12, said the website. The first 25 buyers would have won access to a reception with Mr. Trump before dinner and a VIP tour of the White House. (At the moment, the investor of the 25th classified on the graph has about 4,000 coins, for a value of about $ 54,000.)
“The more $ Trump keep – the longer you keep it – the greater your ranking,” said the website.
The dinner with Mr. Trump should take place on May 22 at the Trump National Golf Club, said the website, calling it the “most exclusive invitation of once in life”.