Trump's crypto dinner: Black ties, a Chinese billionaire and ethics questions

Trump's crypto dinner: Black ties, a Chinese billionaire and ethics questions

 

Zac Anderson and Joey Garrison, USA TODAY

Thu, May 22, 2025 at 4:37 PM GMT+25 min read

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-crypto-dinner-black-ties-143738658.html

 

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump dined with 220 investors who plowed a combined $148 million into his crypto venture, boosting the growing crypto industry and inviting a torrent of criticism about the ethical implications.

 

Black-tie dinners with the wealthy are nothing new for Trump. But this event, which took place on the evening of May 22 at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, stood out among the annals of presidential dining.

 

The dinner with the president was a reward for making the leaderboard in a contest to be among the top purchasers of the $TRUMP meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency. The top 25 buyers spent more than $111 million and were granted a private VIP reception with Trump, while the top four also received a limited edition Trump Tourbillon watch that sells for $100,000.

 

In total, investors spent about $148 million on the $TRUMP meme coin, according to crypto intelligence firm Inca Digital.

 

Trump arrived shortly after 7 p.m. ET riding the presidential helicopter Marine One, which landed on the golf course. He stayed at the dinner for slightly more than an hour before heading back to the White House. The dinner was not open to reporters.

 

About 100 protesters, including Democrats and ethics experts, staged a protest at the club's entrance as guests arrived. Some held signs that read "Stop Crypto Corruption," "America is not for sale," and "Release the guest list."

 

The White House declined to release a list of the attendees, arguing Trump didn't host the dinner in his official capacity.

 

Critics say the dinner provided a way for the wealthy to influence the president by funneling money to his business. An affiliate of The Trump Organization and the company Fight Fight Fight LLC own 80% of the meme coins, according to the cryptocurrency's website.

 

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, who was among the protesters, called the dinner "a stunning public display of corruption: The White House and President Trump are selling access to the government for personal profit."

 

A crypto-friendly president who repeatedly has faced ethical questions dove into both with the dinner. It came just a day after the Trump administration accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar in a deal that raised concerns about the foreign nation trying to curry influence with the president.

 

"This is one of the most blatant and appalling instances of selling access to the presidency I've ever seen," said Donald Sherman, executive director and chief counsel of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

 

Crypto analysis firm Chainalysis found that Trump and business entities connected to him made more than $1.3 million in trading fees in the days after the dinner was announced, Chainalysis spokesman Jorah Huntington told USA TODAY earlier this month.

 

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump "is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself."

 

"President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media," Kelly added.

 

Asked about the dinner during a media briefing on May 22, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it's a private event that Trump is attending on his "personal time" and that he's abiding by conflict of interest laws.

 

"It is absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting from the presidency," Leavitt said. "This president was incredibly successful before giving it all up to serve our country publicly."

 

Trump launched his meme coin on Jan. 17, three days before he retook the White House.

 

Chinese billionaire attended dinner

Though the White House refused to publicize the list of dinner guests, one of those who attended was Chinese-born crypto mogul Justin Sun, who announced his plans on social media.

 

"As the top holder of $TRUMP, I’m excited to connect with everyone, talk crypto, and discuss the future of our industry," Sun, who is worth $8.5 billion, according to Forbes, said ahead of the dinner.

 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Sun and his companies — Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation, and Rainberry — in March 2023. The SEC asked for the case to be put on hold in February to explore a resolution.

 

Sun has become perhaps the most prominent buyer of the World Liberty Financial crypto token that Trump partially owns, spending at least $75 million according to posts on X. Sun is a World Liberty adviser.

 

Trump once criticized the crypto industry but has since become a huge booster and investor. He promoted cryptocurrencies on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Nashville in July 2024 for the Bitcoin Conference that he wanted to make the United States "the crypto capital of the planet and bitcoin superpower of the world." He has promised favorable regulation of the industry, which supported his campaign.

 

The president held a crypto summit in the White House with prominent figures in the industry and signed an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile. The administration dismantled a Justice Department unit targeting crypto fraud.

 

Trump's financial stake in the industry has raised ethical concerns, though. He launched a pair of cryptocurrency tokens and owns 60% of World Liberty Financial.

 

Trump's big crypto revenues

Two of the cryptocurrency investments owned by Trump-affiliated entities alone have made at least $300 million in trading fees on sales of his meme coin and other digital currency since January, according to ethics watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers, crypto analysts, and other experts.

 

Greater potential profits lie in the Trump entities’ stake in the value of the meme coin and their other Trump-themed crypto investments, these analysts and other experts say.

 

Recently, World Liberty Financial announced that one of its digital coins is being used by an Abu Dhabi investment firm for a $2 billion investment in cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Democratic lawmakers and crypto analysts said the deal was a conflict of interest that could earn World Liberty at least $27 million annually.

 

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, who has been at the forefront in bringing attention to the issue, opened a preliminary investigation into Trump's crypto businesses this month.

 

Trump's dinner is "in effect putting a 'For Sale' sign on the White House," Blumenthal said during a press call on May 22. "It’s auctioning off access."

 

More than 200 wealthy, mostly anonymous crypto buyers are coming to Washington on Thursday to have dinner with President Donald Trump. The price of admission: $55,000 to $37.7 million.

 

That’s how much the 220 winners of a contest to meet Trump spent on his volatile cryptocurrency token, $TRUMP, according to an analysis by the blockchain analytics company Nansen.

 

The top $TRUMP coin holders at a specific time — determined by the dinner’s organizers — secured a seat.

 

In total, the winners spent $394 million on Trump’s official cryptocurrency, Nansen found, though some have sold portions of or all of their holdings since the contest ended. The amount varied significantly by spender, with the top seven winners each spending more than $10 million and the bottom 24 each spending less than $100,000. A third of the winners — 67 of them — spent more than a million dollars, the research shows. The average winner spent $1,788,994.42.

 

Like many meme coins, $TRUMP’s value fluctuates wildly, according to CoinMarketCap, which tracks cryptocurrency prices. Nansen tracked how much each of the contest winners spent on their $TRUMP at the time they purchased it.

 

The top 220 contest winners were invited to the black-tie optional dinner at the Trump National Golf Club Washington, D.C. While the website for the contest claims that Trump “is appearing at the dinner as a guest and not soliciting any funds for it,” it also says that 80% of the $TRUMP coin project is owned by two Trump-affiliated companies, CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC.

 

The personal cryptocurrency and associated contest, which ended last Monday, adds to the litany of ways Trump has appeared to use the office of the presidency to profit personally. His business interests are in a trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr., and he has intertwined many of his family businesses with his activities as president, including holding events, like the crypto dinner, at his social clubs, and issuing exclusive political statements on his social media app Truth Social.

 

Trump’s cryptocurrency also makes money for the Trump-tied groups that created it simply by being traded. For every $TRUMP coin that’s traded, a transaction fee is taken. Chainalysis, another cryptocurrency research firm, has estimated that the $TRUMP coin made nearly $900,000 in transaction fees within the first two days of the contest being announced.

 

While most federal employees would be legally barred from using their office for financial gain, the president is largely exempt, Dan Weiner, the director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told NBC News.

 

“The president is not subject to the broad prohibition on conflicts of interest that affects almost everyone else who works for the federal government,” Weiner said.

 

“In general this is pretty wild even by the standards of the first Trump administration, when you had a variety of people doing business at the president’s hotels. This goes far beyond that, but that doesn’t necessarily make it illegal for him,” he said.

 

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement: “The President is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself. President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”

 

Business Insider

Even the winners at the bottom of the leaderboard spent far more than the legal limit for an American to donate directly to a political candidate, $3,500.

 

The top spender revealed himself Tuesday as Justin Sun, a Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur who told Forbes in March he had become a citizen of the tiny island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Sun was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but that case has been paused under the Trump administration.

 

The identities of most of the other contest winners are largely private, known only by their pseudonymous nicknames and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. However, a majority of the attendees appear to be foreign nationals, according to Molly White, an independent crypto researcher who has written about the contest.

 

White examined each winning wallet’s transactions as they crossed through different crypto exchanges, and noted when the holder appeared to use an exchange that does not legally allow U.S. citizens. Of the 220 wallets tied to contest winners, 158 of them, or 72%, appear foreign, White told NBC News.

 

A New York Times investigation reported that the leaderboard included people representing crypto businesses in Singapore and Australia.

 

The prevalence of non-U.S. citizens among the contest winners is notable, as it is generally illegal for people who are not U.S. citizens to donate to American political candidates, Weiner said.

 

“It’s an incredible contrast. We have very strict laws that prohibit foreign nationals from making campaign donations. So the great irony here is that many of the people buying this currency would not be eligible to donate $100 to the president’s campaign,” he said.

 

“We have a variety of laws that are designed to prevent undue foreign influence over our politics, something actually both parties agree is a legitimate thing to try to avoid. And yet you have this happening,” he said.