Trump Pumped and Dumped His Crypto Backers With Dud Dinner Party

[Eugene]

Source: Rolling Stone

Trump Pumped and Dumped His Crypto Backers With Dud Dinner Party

Miles Klee
Fri, May 23, 2025 at 6:28 PM EDT 4 min read

As though launching his own meme coin days before the inauguration wasn’t potentially corrupt enough, three months later, President Donald Trump had his crypto team announce a special dinner party for the 220 top holders of $TRUMP, calling it the “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World.” It temporarily juiced the value of the token by 60 percent as investors spent millions to secure their seats — all in a day’s work for a head of state who has gone above and beyond to cash in on his office, with his family’s fortune ballooning by almost $3 billion thanks to their various crypto plays.

Attendees of the Thursday night banquet at Trump National Golf Club outside Washington, D.C., paid an average of $1 million to get in the room, spending close to $400 million in total. But while the 25 biggest $TRUMP whales were treated to a more exclusive reception with the president, it seems the rest forked over that cash for little more than one another’s company, a reportedly sub-par meal, and generic remarks from Trump, who didn’t even stick around to meet anyone before catching a golf cart back to his helicopter. It had to be something of a disappointment for guests, including foreign executives, who went with the idea of swaying Trump on crypto issues and regulation.

“It was the worst food I’ve ever had at a Trump golf course,” Nicholas Pinto, a business influencer who poured around $300,000 into Trump’s coin, told Wired of the entree, a surf-and-turf dish that included halibut and filet mignon. Speaking to Fortune, he criticized the latter as a “Walmart steak.” Pictures of the plates suggested that the dinner was barely up to airline standards — though it’s not as if you can expect much better from the kitchen at the country club of a man who also put his name on what was once suggested to be “the worst restaurant in America.” (Even a Thanksgiving reservation at Mar-a-Lago gets you what appears to be the equivalent of a frozen TV dinner.)

Among those who did enjoy some extra perks was Justin Sun, ...

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-pumped-dumped-crypto-backers-222830540.html

[Eugene]

1. Trump is hosting a private dinner for the top 220 buyers of his memecoin tonight--and even the crypto lobby is grumbling

Source: Fortune

Trump is hosting a private dinner for the top 220 buyers of his memecoin tonight—and even the crypto lobby is grumbling

Leo Schwartz
Thu, May 22, 2025 at 5:21 PM EDT 4 min read

When Donald Trump embraced blockchain technology during his presidential campaign, the crypto industry celebrated that they finally had an ally running for the top U.S. office. They didn’t expect to also get a competitor.

On Thursday, the president will host a “Gala Dinner” for the top 220 holders of his $TRUMP memecoin at his golf club in Virginia—an unprecedented blend of public duties and private business dealings, especially with most of the attendees remaining pseudonymous.

The formal dinner, which will begin at 7 p.m. and requires a background check, has sparked an outcry from Democrats and ethics experts, who have pointed out that Trump’s family business, which launched the coin, controls the vast majority of the cryptocurrency’s holdings and trading fees. But they are not the only ones expressing concern: The crypto lobby, which Trump wooed on the campaign trail and during his first few months in office, is starting to privately voice its displeasure, partly owing to fear that the optics of the dinner could derail proposed crypto legislation that is at a pivotal juncture in Congress.

“It’s a horrible look for him, the industry, and the country,” said one crypto lobbyist representing major industry firms, who spoke with Fortune on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive client relationships. “No one really seems to care in the Trump administration.”

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-hosting-private-dinner-top-212127777.html

[allegorical oracle]

3. Takes a chunk of crust to require background checks on his dinner guests, when he wouldn't

pass one.

[Frasier Balzov]

2. Food at Comicon is considerably cheaper.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. This made me smile