{"id":8474,"date":"2025-05-06T03:58:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T03:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=8474"},"modified":"2025-05-06T03:58:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T03:58:54","slug":"trumps-meme-coin-business-racks-up-fees-as-buyers-jump-for-access-to-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=8474","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s meme coin business racks up fees as buyers jump for access to president"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the crypto world, meme coins are mostly just jokes with no intrinsic value. But the Trump family is parlaying the president\u2019s meme coin into two valuable commodities: serious cash and access to the president.<\/p>\n

Since the coin was launched earlier this year, it has generated more than $320 million in fees for its creators, according to the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. And on Monday, Trump promoted<\/a> a dinner he\u2019s set to attend on May 22 that\u2019s open to almost anyone who buys enough of the coins.<\/p>\n

According to the contest\u2019s rules, the top 220 holders of the meme coin will get to go to the dinner at Trump\u2019s Washington-area golf club. The top 25 holders will also get to attend a reception where they can rub shoulders with Trump beforehand.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet the President know how many $TRUMP coins YOU own!\u201d the meme coin said on its website<\/a> promoting the dinner.<\/p>\n

Trading activity in the meme coin jumped after the dinner was first announced and the price rose as well. But the Trumps don\u2019t need to sell any coins to make money.<\/p>\n

Decentralization is foundational to cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, the world\u2019s most popular crypto, was born in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as a digital currency meant to be uncontrolled by banks or governments.<\/p>\n

Trump meme coins can be traded on a decentralized exchange, which is essentially a place where traders can swap goods without a middleman.<\/p>\n

Instead of matching buyers and sellers one by one, decentralized exchanges use something called a liquidity pool to ensure trades can happen easily and instantly. Liquidity pools are essentially an automated pot of funds that pair meme coins like $TRUMP with more popular types of crypto that can be easily traded.<\/p>\n

When the Trump meme coin was first launched, its creators initially released 20% of the planned 1 billion total coins. Half of that 20% was put up for public sale while the other half was put into a liquidity pool. CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and another company receive \u201ctrading revenue derived from trading activities\u201d of the Trump meme coins, according to its website.<\/p>\n

Through the liquidity pool, the creators of Trump\u2019s meme coins make money by charging tiny fees on each trade.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t really care about what happens to the price. You only care that there is continuous volume,\u201d said Nicolai S\u00f8ndergaard, a research analyst at the blockchain analytics firm Nansen. \u201cBecause the more volume there is, that means more trades and therefore more fees for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since cryptocurrency blockchains are public, it\u2019s possible to track how much in trading fees has been paid. Chainalysis said Trump meme coin creators made more than $1.3 million in trading fees in the week after the dinner was first announced. The value of the meme coin jumped from about $9 to around $14 just after the announcement. It was trading around $11 on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Launched just before he took office, Trump\u2019s meme coin has become one of the most high-profile ways the norm-breaking president has mixed politics and his personal finances.<\/p>\n

The remaining 80% of Trump\u2019s meme coins, which are still under a lock-up, have been allocated to CIC Digital and another company. An ethics agreement <\/a> prohibits Trump from \u201cday-to-day\u201d decision making at the Trump Organization when he\u2019s president and limits the financial information about the business that can be shared with him. <\/p>\n

During an interview with NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d over the weekend, Trump said he didn\u2019t follow the price swings of his meme coin and dismissed the idea that he was profiting from the presidency. He also rejected a suggestion that he would forgo any profits made from his crypto endeavors.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould I contribute all of my real estate that I\u2019ve owned for many years if it goes up a little bit because I\u2019m president and doing a good job? I don\u2019t think so,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

The team behind Trump\u2019s meme coins has been aggressively trying to promote the chance to eat with the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood News! President Trump is allowing one more person to attend Dinner with Trump,\u201d the meme coin\u2019s official account on X said<\/a> last week, encouraging people to reply with memes featuring Trump. \u201cOur favorite $TRUMP memes will be shown to President Trump and we will pick 1 person who gets to come to the dinner on May 22nd!\u201d<\/p>\n

The creators have also tried to up the ante by offering $100,000 Trump-themed watches<\/a> to the top four holders of Trump\u2019s meme coins.<\/p>\n

On Monday night, Trump hosted a closed-door \u201cCrypto & AI Innovators Dinner\u201d fundraiser sponsored by his MAGA Inc. super PAC at his golf club outside Washington. An invitation to the event that circulated online instructs those invited to pay $1.5 million per person to attend. The White House did not provide a list of attendees, though the super PAC eventually will be required to list donors in its regular public disclosures.<\/p>\n

Whether the public will ever know who bought their way into the meme coin dinner with the president is unclear, though. Unlike political donations that must be publicly reported, there\u2019s no disclosure requirement for meme coin buyers. <\/p>\n

Critics of Trump\u2019s foray into meme coins, which includes several Democrats, say the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency gives bad actors the opportunity to try and unduly influence the president through purchasing his digital assets.<\/p>\n

The Trump meme coin website assures those who register for the contest that their full legal name and contact information will \u201cnever be publicly shown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, registrants pick a username that\u2019s displayed on the website\u2019s leaderboard.<\/a> The ranking is dependent not just on how many Trump meme coins someone holds, but also on how long.<\/p>\n

After No. 220, the board has a note of encouragement for those just below the cut to buy more of the meme coins.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re so close. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT for your $TRUMP dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Associated Press reporter Will Weissert contributed. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the crypto world, meme coins are mostly just jokes with no intrinsic value. But the Trump family is parlaying the president\u2019s meme coin into two valuable commodities: serious cash and access to the president. Since the coin was launched earlier this year, it has generated more than $320 million in fees for its creators, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8476,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8474\/revisions\/8476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}