In the crypto world, meme coins are mostly just jokes with no intrinsic value. But the Trump family is parlaying the president’s 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, according to the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. And on Monday, Trump promoted a dinner he’s set to attend on May 22 that’s open to almost anyone who buys enough of the coins.
According to the contest’s rules, the top 220 holders of the meme coin will get to go to the dinner at Trump’s Washington-area golf club. The top 25 holders will also get to attend a reception where they can rub shoulders with Trump beforehand.
“Let the President know how many $TRUMP coins YOU own!” the meme coin said on its website promoting the dinner.
Trading activity in the meme coin jumped after the dinner was first announced and the price rose as well. But the Trumps don’t need to sell any coins to make money.
Decentralization is foundational to cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, the world’s 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.
Trump meme coins can be traded on a decentralized exchange, which is essentially a place where traders can swap goods without a middleman.
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.
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 “trading revenue derived from trading activities” of the Trump meme coins, according to its website.
Through the liquidity pool, the creators of Trump’s meme coins make money by charging tiny fees on each trade.
“You don’t really care about what happens to the price. You only care that there is continuous volume,” said Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at the blockchain analytics firm Nansen. “Because the more volume there is, that means more trades and therefore more fees for you.”
Since cryptocurrency blockchains are public, it’s 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.
Launched just before he took office, Trump’s meme coin has become one of the most high-profile ways the norm-breaking president has mixed politics and his personal finances.
The remaining 80% of Trump’s meme coins, which are still under a lock-up, have been allocated to CIC Digital and another company. An ethics agreement prohibits Trump from “day-to-day” decision making at the Trump Organization when he’s president and limits the financial information about the business that can be shared with him.
During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend, Trump said he didn’t 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.
“Should I contribute all of my real estate that I’ve owned for many years if it goes up a little bit because I’m president and doing a good job? I don’t think so,” Trump said.
The team behind Trump’s meme coins has been aggressively trying to promote the chance to eat with the president.
“Good News! President Trump is allowing one more person to attend Dinner with Trump,” the meme coin’s official account on X said last week, encouraging people to reply with memes featuring Trump. “Our 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!”
The creators have also tried to up the ante by offering $100,000 Trump-themed watches to the top four holders of Trump’s meme coins.
On Monday night, Trump hosted a closed-door “Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner” 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.
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’s no disclosure requirement for meme coin buyers.
Critics of Trump’s 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.
The Trump meme coin website assures those who register for the contest that their full legal name and contact information will “never be publicly shown.”
Instead, registrants pick a username that’s displayed on the website’s leaderboard. The ranking is dependent not just on how many Trump meme coins someone holds, but also on how long.
After No. 220, the board has a note of encouragement for those just below the cut to buy more of the meme coins.
“You’re so close. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT for your $TRUMP dinner.”
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Associated Press reporter Will Weissert contributed.
FILE - Then Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference, July 27, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)
Footage obtained by The Associated Press of a cruise ship at the center of a rare-virus outbreak shows deserted decks and gathering areas, medical teams in protective gear, and a still landscape ahead as the vessel and its nearly 150 passengers and crew waited another day for direction and help off the coast of West Africa.
Three passengers have died and at least four people are sick in what health officials say is an outbreak of hantavirus, which usually spreads by inhaling contaminated rodent droppings. The World Health Organization said passengers are isolating in their cabins and that the vessel — in the Atlantic off Cape Verde — might be moved to Spain’s Canary Islands. But Spanish officials said Tuesday that they were monitoring the situation and haven't made a decision.
The MV Hondius, a Dutch ship on a weekslong polar cruise, departed April 1 from Argentina for Antarctica and several isolated islands in the South Atlantic.
“Our days have been close to normal, just waiting for authorities to find a solution,” passenger Qasem Elhato, 31 — who sent AP the video footage — said via WhatsApp. “But morale on the ship is high and we’re keeping ourselves busy with reading, watching movies, having hot drinks and that kind of things.”
Helene Goessaert, another passenger, told Belgian broadcaster VRT that everyone onboard is “in the same boat, literally.”
“You don’t embark on a trip with the idea that one of your fellow passengers won’t make it,” she said.
“We receive information at regular intervals. It is accurate. For the rest, it is a waiting game,” she added. “Today we received fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. That was very important to us.”
Authorities in Cape Verde have said they sent teams of doctors, surgeons, nurses and laboratory specialists to the Hondius. They were seen in Elhato's video footage — wearing white overalls, boots and face masks as they disembarked to a smaller vessel.
Officials in Cape Verde’s capital of Praia, a city of less than 200,000 people, said they have stepped up safety protocols, particularly near the port, as a precautionary measure against the rodent-borne illness — which doesn't usually spread person to person, though health authorities say it might be possible.
Elhato said passengers were wearing masks and social distancing — practices that became hallmarks of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions said it had implemented its highest level of response plan, with isolation measures, hygiene protocols and medical monitoring.
WHO said late Monday that sick passengers would soon be evacuated to the Netherlands for medical care. But it remained unclear Tuesday when any evacuations would happen.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that the ship would “continue on to the Canary Islands.”
“We’re working with Spanish authorities, who will welcome the ship,” Van Kerkhove said, emphasizing that sick passengers would first be moved.
But Spanish health officials said in a statement that they were monitoring and that "the most appropriate port of call will be decided. Until then, the Ministry of Health will not adopt any decision, as we have informed the World Health Organization.”
WHO said Tuesday that it's looking at seven cases in all — three people who have died, one critically ill passenger who was previously taken off the ship, and three onboard reporting mild symptoms.
Two of the cases — a woman who died and the evacuated man — tested positive for hantavirus.
A Dutch man was the first death, on April 11. His body was taken off the vessel nearly two weeks later, on the British territory of St. Helena, some 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) off the African coast, according to South Africa’s Department of Health.
His wife traveled by plane from St. Helena to South Africa; she collapsed at a Johannesburg airport and died at a hospital on April 26, according to WHO and the South African Department of Health.
The ship sailed on to Ascension Island, an isolated Atlantic outpost about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the north, where a sick British man was taken off the ship and evacuated first to Ascension Island and then to South Africa by plane. He is in intensive care in a South African hospital, according to WHO.
Van Kerkhove said that WHO is investigating possible human-to-human transmission on the ship, and that officials suspect the first infected person likely contracted the virus before boarding. She said officials have been told there are no rats on board.
Officials in Argentina — where hantavirus led to 28 deaths nationwide last year, according to the health ministry — said they confirmed no passengers had symptoms when the Hondius departed. Symptoms can appear up to eight weeks after exposure, officials have said.
In South Africa, authorities said they have started contact tracing — another practice used extensively in the coronavirus pandemic. But officials have emphasized that the chance of a major public health threat is low.
Asadu reported from Abuja, Nigeria; Risemberg from Dakar, Senegal. AP journalists Suman Naishadham in Madrid; Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg, South Africa; Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands; and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed.
The MV Hondius cruise ship is anchored at a port in Praia, Cape Verde, Monday, May 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Arilson Almeida)
Research scientist Robert Nofchissey prepares samples of inactivated material as part of hantavirus research at the Center for Global Health at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday, May 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)
The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, a cruise ship carrying nearly 150 people remains off Cape Verde on Monday, May 4, 2026 after three passengers died and several others fell seriously ill in a suspected hantavirus outbreak. (Qasem Elhato via AP)
A view of the inside of the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, a cruise ship carrying nearly 150 people as it remains off Cape Verde on Monday, May 4, 2026 after three passengers died and several others fell seriously ill in a suspected hantavirus outbreak. (Qasem Elhato via AP)
Health workers get off the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, a cruise ship carrying nearly 150 people as it remains off Cape Verde on Monday, May 4, 2026 after three passengers died and several others fell seriously ill in a suspected hantavirus outbreak. (Qasem Elhato via AP)
