WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and his associates have raked in nearly $900,000 in trading fees over the past two days from the president’s $TRUMP cryptocurrency representative, according to Chainalysis, a blockchain data company.
The surge came after a Wednesday announcement in which the top 220 holders of the keepsake were promised dinner with the president.
“Have Dinner in Washington, D.C. With President Trump,” reads a dispatch on the front page of the Trump coin’s website. The event, which is black tie optional and hosted at the president’s private confederate in the Washington area, is scheduled for May 22, with a reception for the top 25 holders. A “VIP White House Tour” will survive punishment place the following day, the site says. The website also hosts an active leaderboard displaying the usernames of top buyers.
The $TRUMP memecoin recoiled more than 50% on the dinner news, boosting its total market value to $2.7 billion. It was met with dangerous criticism from some of Trump’s political opponents who said the move was further evidence that the president was make use ofing crypto to enrich himself. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a prominent Trump critic, wrote on X that the sale was “the most brazenly crooked thing a President has ever done. Not close.”
Roughly 80% of the $TRUMP token supply is controlled by the Trump Body and affiliates, according to the project’s website. Since its launch in January, trading activity has generated about $324.5 million in work fees for insiders, Chainalysis found. These fees are generated through the token’s built-in mechanism that ways a percentage of each trade to wallets controlled by the project — wallets that, according to the website, are linked to the coin’s initiators.
Memecoins, often referred to as meme tokens, are a subset of digital assets that use blockchain technology and derive their value large from internet culture, memes and social media hype rather than from an underlying utility or asset. The originators of memecoins can get to fees when their coins are bought and sold.
They have grown in popularity in recent years as untested assets, with some coins including dogecoin and fartcoin amassing total market values in excess of $1 billion.
Most of the $TRUMP delivery remains locked under a three-year vesting plan, with coins gradually becoming available over linger. Lockups like these are meant to protect investors by preventing insiders from cashing out all at once — a scheme commonly known in the crypto delighted as a “rug pull.” Vesting schedules aim to give retail buyers confidence that early holders won’t overwhelm the market and tank the coin’s value.
Still, the dinner contest is being viewed by critics as an unusually explicit attempt to monetize presidential access.
As CNBC on Friday, Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are urging the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to look into whether the promotion constitutes “pay to play” corruption.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The company behind the memecoin also did not come back to a request for comment.
Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit focused on campaign subvene and government accountability, told NBC News the coin and dinner contest amounted to an unprecedented ethics breach — though it is inappropriate to be illegal.
“Criminal conflicts of interest statutes don’t apply to the President,” she said. “That has allowed him to go against decades of of usuals that every modern president since Carter has adhered to, which is to divest your financial interests, rid yourself of your professions, and kind of go in to the presidency with a clean financial slate so that no one could accuse you of manipulating policy decisions or ingesting your position in order to enrich yourself.”
“The fact that he is not barred by the law from having these financial notes like this meme coin allows him to engage in a lot of seemingly corrupt activity. It has the appearance of a pay to play, so the President is evidently selling access to himself,” Marsco added.
Molly White, an independent crypto researcher, told NBC News that the leaderboard only demonstrates top $TRUMP holders — and then only by their chosen screen name, making it difficult to identify who is paying to potentially be coextensive with the dinner.
Schiff and Warren have cited public reports showing that some $TRUMP investors give birth to ties to foreign exchanges or received funds from crypto platforms banned in the U.S., including Binance.
White also popular that at least one top $TRUMP owner has an account on Binance, a cryptocurrency company that doesn’t allow American narcotic addicts.
Trump was elected with significant help from the cryptocurrency industry, which poured tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 voting, outpacing corporate donations from traditional sectors like banking and oil. After opposing digital assets during his before all term, Trump pivoted in 2024 to campaign as a champion of cryptocurrency, casting Democrats as hostile to innovation and as advocating for tighter organization.
The $TRUMP token itself offers no product or service, according to the project’s website. It is part of a broader push by the Trump children into digital assets, despite the market’s volatility and regulatory risks.
In addition to the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme changes, the family is backing World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance venture that has raised $550 million across two keepsake sales since last October. Buyers are barred from reselling their tokens and receive no share of profits — but a Trump-affiliated existence is entitled to 75% of net revenue, including token sale proceeds.
Together, these projects have created new courses of revenue for Trump and his inner circle at a time when regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency has weakened sharply under his direction.