Dinner With Trump Sends Memecoin Soaring – Then Crashing
The Trump-linked memecoin sparked a massive buying spree as investors rushed to qualify for an exclusive dinner with the U.S. president.
The top 220 token holders were promised a seat at the May 22 event at his Virginia golf club — a deadline that triggered nearly $2 billion in token purchases.
But the hype didn’t last. Blockchain data shows that over 30 major holders dumped their positions just hours after qualifying, prompting a sharp price dip before a partial rebound. Traders appear to have used the dinner invite as an exit strategy, a move common in speculative crypto markets.
Critics say the model raises ethical concerns, as paying for access via an unregulated token blurs the line between campaign hype and influence-peddling. The token’s rapid rise and fall also renewed debates about how crypto sits in regulatory gray zones when tied to public figures.
Despite the controversy, the Trump Organization and partners reportedly earned over $320 million in trading fees since the token’s launch, including more than $1 million after the dinner promo alone. One wallet linked to HTX exchange holds $14.6 million in tokens — securing the top seat at the table.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
