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. …