Who Won a
Seat at Trump’s Crypto Dinner?
The New York
Times reviewed a guest list and social media posts to identify who was invited
to President Trump’s private event for customers of his cryptocurrency business
on Thursday and a White House tour on Friday. Here are some of them.
David A.
Fahrenthold Eric LiptonDavid
Yaffe-Bellany Elena Shao Dylan Freedman
By David A.
FahrentholdEric LiptonDavid Yaffe-BellanyElena Shao and Dylan Freedman
David A.
Fahrenthold, Eric Lipton and Dylan Freedman reported from Washington. David
Yaffe-Bellany reported from Sterling, Va. Elena Shao reported from New York.
May 23, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/us/politics/trump-crypto-dinner-attendees.html
The invitees
for President Trump’s private dinner for customers of his cryptocurrency
business on Thursday included a Chinese billionaire fighting a lawsuit from
U.S. regulators, a lawyer for Justice Clarence Thomas and a former basketball
star, according to a guest list obtained by The New York Times and social media
posts.
The dinner,
at which Mr. Trump gave remarks, was an extraordinary moment in which the
president leveraged his position to make money — for his crypto business and
for his Virginia golf club, which hosted the event.
The event’s
invited guests were not known publicly beforehand, even to each other. They
were identified only by the pseudonyms they used on the electronic wallets
where they kept their $TRUMP memecoins. Most had gained an invitation by
becoming one of the top 220 holders of that memecoin over a certain period of
time. The top 25 of those were given V.I.P. status and afforded a more intimate
gathering before the dinner and an unofficial tour of the White House on
Friday.
When they
arrived at Mr. Trump’s club outside Washington Thursday evening, the digital
world had become physical. The invitees’ names and contact information were
delineated on paper lists, checked by staffers at the door. A Times reporter
reviewed one of those lists, and used it to identify people who were present.
Some other invitees self-identified on social media. A reporter and
photographer from The Times also saw some $TRUMP crypto buyers enter and exit
the White House on Friday.
The
following were among those who were invited to the festivities.
Invitees to
the White House
Justin Sun,
a Chinese crypto billionaire who was sued by the Securities and Exchange
Commission under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for allegedly inflating the
value of a cryptocurrency. Mr. Sun is a major investor in a separate crypto
venture largely owned by a company tied to Mr. Trump, World Liberty Financial.
After Mr. Trump took office, the S.E.C. asked a judge to put Mr. Sun’s case on
hold. He declined to comment on Thursday night.
Elliot
Berke, a Washington attorney who has worked for congressional Republicans and
Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. The Times identified him because
the invitee list included his email address at his law firm, Berke Farah. He
was honored as “Republican Lawyer of the Year” in 2021 by the Republican
National Lawyers Association. He did not immediately respond to requests for
comment sent via email or LinkedIn message.
Evgeny
Gaevoy, the founder and chief executive of a digital-asset firm, Wintermute.
The Times identified him because the list of invitees included his Wintermute
email. He did not respond to a request for comment sent via email.
Anil Lulla
and Yan Liberman, two co-founders of Delphi Digital, a Miami Beach firm that
offers market intelligence for crypto investors. Their corporate emails were
included in the list of invitees. They did not respond to requests for comment.
Cheng Lu,
32, a crypto investor from Shanghai, was observed by a Times reporter entering
the White House on Friday. He said he did not have a chance to speak with Mr.
Trump during the dinner on Thursday or at the Friday tour. “I just want to see
President Trump,” he said. He plans to go to Las Vegas next for a poker
tournament, he said.
Stephen
Dworkin, founder of CTS International, was observed by a reporter for The Times
entering the White House on Friday. The company has helped military
contractors, including Israel Aircraft Industries, recruit employees, according
to his LinkedIn page. He declined to comment.
Sangrok Oh,
chief executive of Hyperithm, a Seoul- and Tokyo-based firm that manages
digital assets for institutional investors in Asia. He was observed entering
the Thursday event and was interviewed by a reporter for The Times and was seen
outside the White House on Friday as the V.I.P. buyers visited for the tour.
Matthew Liu,
co-founder of cryptocurrency company Origin, and former project manager at
YouTube, was seen at the White House on his way to the V.I.P. tour. After the
tour, he reached out to a reporter to confirm his attendance. “There have been
recent unsubstantiated allegations of foreign attendees attempting to buy
influence with the president, and there was absolutely zero evidence of this at
the event,” he said in an email to The Times. “While there were attendees from
both the U.S. and abroad, the central theme of the event was growing our
industry together and working with intelligent, fair and innovation-friendly
U.S. regulators.”
Other
invitees
Caitlin
Sinclair, a conservative media personality who has worked as a reporter for
pro-Trump One America News and the young-conservatives group, Turning Point
Action. She posted photos from the dinner on social media, including one that
showed Mr. Trump in the background. Ms. Sinclair’s role at the event was
unclear, but attendees found fliers on their tables with her photo, which said
“connect with your host,” and contained a QR code that brought them to Ms.
Sinclair’s website.
Daniel Nizar
Boubes was charged with drug-related crimes in Orange County, Calif., and given
two years of probation, court records show. “I was a drug addict for years, and
that’s what that’s all about,” Mr. Boubes said in a phone interview Friday. He
said he has since changed his life, and took an interest in crypto. A
spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said Mr. Boubes
pleaded guilty to five felony counts, including two counts of bringing a
controlled substance into a jail or prison, and was sentenced to two years’
probation. She said the case was dismissed in 2022 after he successfully
completed probation.
SuKyung Na,
an executive at Hyperithm.“Looking forward to interesting conversations and the
chance to share a bit about what we do at Hyperithm,” Ms. Na wrote before the
event. Her corporate email was on the invitee list.
Charles
Ayres, a Britain-based crypto marketer and YouTube promoter, confirmed in a
phone interview that he attended the Thursday night event. He declined further
comment.
Wesley Pryor
is the founder of Acheron Trading, a firm focused on digital assets. His
Acheron email address was on a list of invitees reviewed by The Times. On
LinkedIn, he said he had been active in cryptocurrency since he was a teenager,
and that he now operates out of Singapore, which he called “the world’s most
progressive jurisdiction for cryptocurrency.” He did not respond to a request
for comment.
Jack Tan Lu
is the chief executive and co-founder of a popular marketplace for non-fungible
tokens, or NFTs, called Magic Eden. His email address with his company was
included on the invitee list. He did not respond to an email request for
comment.
Tony Yacoub
lists himself on LinkedIn as president of T and A Builders, a general
contractor in Downey, Calif. The Times identified him because his company email
address was included in a list of the event’s attendees. He did not respond to
requests for comment sent via email or LinkedIn.
Clay Helms
and Stephen Hess, two executives from the Metaplex Foundation, a nonprofit
focused on digital assets. Their emails through their nonprofit were on the
invitee list reviewed by The Times. They did not respond to requests for
comment.
Asher Ang
and Lean Sheng Tan, two executives of hedge fund Hyper-Alpha Capital. On
LinkedIn, Mr. Tan said he was based in the British Virgin Islands. Their
corporate emails were on the invitee list reviewed by The Times. They did not
respond to requests for comment.
Kain
Warwick, a crypto entrepreneur in Sydney and founder of Synthetix, a crypto
exchange. He was interviewed by The Times.
Joel Lee, a
software engineer from Singapore who says on social media that he lives in
Rwanda. He was observed by a Times reporter entering the event on Thursday
night.
Aleksander
Michal Kloda, founder of Nickel Digital Asset Management, who describes himself
on his LinkedIn account as a “blockchain enthusiast and crypto algorithmic
trader.”
Vincent Liu,
the chief investment officer at Taiwan-based Kronos Research. He posted several
photos from the event on LinkedIn, with the caption: “Great to see the support
for Crypto industry from Mr. President!”
Paul Jacobi,
a partner at the investment firm Wexford Capital, was listed among the
attendees, and a reporter for The Times saw him enter the event. His firm’s
website says that Mr. Jacobi “focuses on Wexford’s private equity energy
investments.”
Christoph
Heuermann, who runs a consulting company that advises people on how to lower
their taxes, flew in from Germany. He said in an email with The Times that as a
non-V.I.P., he knew beforehand that he would not get to meet Mr. Trump, but he
said he enjoyed hearing a speech from “the greatest president in history.”
Verjender
Choudhary, a software engineer from St. Louis, said in an email that he saw the
dinner as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity “to meet the first crypto
president.”
Vincent
Deriu, a 27-year-old consultant in New York who was ranked No. 165 on the
$TRUMP leaderboard, was interviewed by The Times. “If I were to get a selfie or
a handshake or something or an autograph, that would be priceless in and of
itself for me,” he said.
Jiawei Wang
contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
David A.
Fahrenthold is a Times investigative reporter writing about nonprofit
organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades.
Eric Lipton
is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from
Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.
David
Yaffe-Bellany writes about the crypto industry from New York. He can be reached
at davidyb@nytimes.com.
Elena Shao
is a reporter and graphics editor based in New York.
Dylan
Freedman is a machine-learning engineer and journalist working on a team at The
Times that leverages A.I. for reporting.
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