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With President Donald Trump’s private dinner for top meme coin holders lower than every week away, the leaderboard is awash with crypto wallets which might be effectively anonymous.
On May 22, the highest 220 $TRUMP holders are invited to a dinner with the president at his Virginia golf club outside of Washington, D.C. The event was announced last month, and the tally closed Monday night.
The character of the pseudonymous wallets raises questions on the true identities and motivations of the token’s largest holders, who’ve bought a seat on the table with a U.S. president.
Documents from blockchain analytics firm Inca Digital that were reviewed by CNBC show where the highest 275 $TRUMP token holders send and receive the token. Many are heavily tied to international exchanges like Binance that do not service U.S. customers, a sign that they are likely not U.S. residents.
An evaluation by Bloomberg revealed that 19 of the highest 25 wallets are almost actually owned by individuals operating outside the U.S.
Justin Sun, who openly shared that he bought $75 million value of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial token — a digital coin where 75% of proceeds go to Trump-related entities — is believed to be at the highest of the $TRUMP meme token leaderboard.
Sun, who was born in China, is the crypto entrepreneur behind the Tron blockchain and is in talks with the SEC to resolve civil fraud charges.
A wallet called Sun currently holds greater than $18 million value of $TRUMP, with $4.5 million bought after the dinner contest announcement, based on Bloomberg.
Multiple reports point to the wallet being tied to the Tron founder. A representative for Sun didn’t reply to CNBC’s request for comment or confirm whether Sun is the wallet owner.
MemeCore, a Singapore-based crypto network that was vocal in its quest to secure a spot on the Trump dinner, landed in second place with an investment of $18 million. An Australian crypto entrepreneur also reportedly made the cut.
The leaderboard points to the token’s extreme volatility.
Inca Digital told CNBC that while 560,376 wallets have made a combined $5.2 billion in realized gains on the $TRUMP token, an excellent larger number — 592,962 wallets — have collectively lost $3.9 billion.
The figures underscore the large wealth transfer inside Trump’s crypto ecosystem, where early buyers have seen windfalls while the bulk have suffered losses.
Chainalysis and Elliptic, two leading blockchain analytics firms, initially tracked $TRUMP token movements and trading fees. But days after CNBC published a story on the variety of crypto wallets that had lost money on the meme coin, the firms said they were too busy with existing clients to proceed blockchain evaluation of the president’s self-branded meme token.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the rating member of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, warned that the Trump family’s growing crypto holdings may function a backdoor for foreign and company interests in search of access to the president.
Freight Technologies, a Houston-based logistics firm that trades on the Nasdaq and has a market cap of just over $2.3 million, bought $2 million value of the $TRUMP tokens to influence U.S.-Mexico trade policy, based on a release. CEO Javier Selgas described the move as a strategic push to “champion fair and free trade” across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Freight Technologies finished in 250th place, missing the cut for the dinner.
