WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and his allies have raked in about $900,000 in transaction fees over the past two days from Trump’s cryptocurrency tokens, according to blockchain data company Chainalysis.
The surge comes after Wednesday’s announcement when the top 220 owners of the tokens were promised dinner with the president.
“I’m having dinner in Washington, DC with President Trump,” he reads a message on the front page of the Trump Coin website. Optionally in Black Tie and hosted at the Washington Area President’s Private Club, the event is scheduled for May 22nd with a reception for the top 25 owners. The “VIP White House Tour” will take place the next day, the site says. This website also hosts an active leaderboard that displays the usernames of top buyers.
$Trump’s Memecoin surged by more than 50% on dinner news, increasing its total market value to $2.7 billion. It has been heavily criticized by some of Trump’s political enemies who have said it is further evidence that the president is using codes to enrich himself. Senator Chris Murphy, a well-known Trump critic, wrote in X, “it’s the bravest corrupt thing the president has ever done.”
According to the project’s website, approximately 80% of the $Trump Token supply is managed by Trump’s organization and affiliates. Since its launch in January, trading activities have generated around $324.5 million in insider trading fees, chain analysis found. These charges are generated through a built-in mechanism of tokens that route the percentage of each transaction to a wallet controlled by the project. This is linked to the creator of Coin, according to the website.
Memokines, often called meme tokens, are a subset of digital assets that use blockchain technology and come from internet culture, memes and social media hype, rather than from underlying utilities and assets. The founders of Memecoins can earn fees when coins are bought and sold.
They have become more popular as speculative assets in recent years, with several coins, including Dogecoin and Fartcoin, accumulating total market value of over $1 billion.
Most of the $Trump supply remains locked under a three-year vesting plan, and the coins will gradually become available over time. Such lockups aim to protect investors by preventing insiders from cashing out everything at once. This is a scheme commonly known in the cryptographic world as “ragpur”. Best Schedule aims to give retail buyers confidence that early owners dominate the market and don’t fight for the value of their tokens.
Still, the dinner contest is seen by critics as an unusually explicit attempt to monetize presidential access.
As CNBC reported Friday, California Democrat Adam Schiff and Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren are urging the U.S. Government Ethics Bureau to investigate whether promotions constitute corruption that they “pay to play.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The company behind Memecoin also did not respond to requests for comment.
Delaney Marsco, director of ethics at Campaign Legal Centre, a nonprofit focused on campaign finance and government accountability, told NBC News that coins and dinner contests amount to unprecedented ethics violations, but it’s unlikely to be illegal.
“The criminal interest conflict does not apply to the president,” she said. “It allowed him to oppose decades of norms, which is to sell all the modern presidents Carter had adhered to, namely, your financial interests, remove your business, and go to the presidency on a clean financial slate, so that no one can use your position to manipulate you or enrich yourself.”
“The fact that he is not prohibited by law from having these economic benefits like this meme coin allows him to engage in many seemingly corrupt activities.
Molly White, an independent cryptography researcher, told NBC News that the leaderboards only show the top of the Trump holders, only by the screen name they choose, making it difficult to pinpoint who will pay to attend dinner.
Schiff and Warren cite public reports showing that several $Trump investors have either been linked to foreign exchanges or are receiving funds from US banned crypto platforms, including Binance.
White also said that at least one Top$$ owner has an account with Binance, a cryptocurrency company that does not allow American users.
Trump was elected with key support from the cryptocurrency industry, which poured tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election and surpassed donations from companies from traditional sectors such as banks and oil. After opposing digital assets during his first term, Trump campaigned as cryptocurrency champion in 2024, campaigning Democrats to be hostile to innovation and defending stricter regulations.
According to the project’s website, the $Trump Token itself does not provide any products or services. This is part of the Trump family’s broader push towards digital assets despite market volatility and regulatory risks.
In addition to the $Trump and $Melania meme coins, the family is supporting World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance venture that has raised $550 million in two token sales since October last year. Buyers will be banned from resale of tokens and will not receive a share of profits, but entities belonging to Trump are eligible for 75% of their net revenue, including revenue from token sales.
Together, these projects created a new revenue stream for Trump and his inner circle when regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency was sharply weakened under his administration.
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