Tuxedos, luxury SUVs and a former NBA star

“The president is attending it in his personal time. It is not a White House dinner. It’s not taking place here at the White House,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary.

But event organizers did not market it as a personal event. The dinner’s website says: “President Donald J. Trump is Known as the ‘Crypto President!’ At this Intimate Private Dinner, Hear First-Hand President Trump Talk about the Future of Crypto.”

According to multiple photos posted on X by people who said they were inside the event, Trump was due to speak from a podium with the presidential seal.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said this week that Trump was not acting to enrich himself. “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media,” she said.

Trump’s all-in dive into cryptocurrency is a sharp reversal from a few years ago, when he bashed the industry. “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” he said in a series of social media posts in 2019.

Like other meme coins, the $TRUMP coin is far from a traditional investment. It is not tied to anything with tangible value, and it is part of a carnival-casino atmosphere that has returned to cryptocurrency since Trump was re-elected in November.

The fine print on the website of the $TRUMP project says the coins “are intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol $TRUMP and are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.”

The secrecy around the invitation list set off a scramble to confirm who paid money to attend the dinner. The event’s website published a leaderboard of who owned the most $TRUMP coin, but with usernames instead of real names.

Using publicly available information from the coin’s blockchain recordkeeping system, Bloomberg News reported strong interest in the coin among non-Americans. According to Bloomberg, 19 of the top 25 holders bought on foreign exchanges that say they exclude U.S. customers, and 56% of the top 220 bought on those exchanges.

The top holder identified himself on X this week as Justin Sun, a Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur whom the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued in 2023, alleging fraud. The case is still pending, though the SEC has explored a possible settlement or dismissal following Trump’s second inauguration.

As people began arriving for the event, the price of $TRUMP dropped suddenly by about 6%, indicating a significant sales volume, before it stabilized again.

Protesters, meanwhile, used megaphones to amplify their chants while standing in the rain for hours. They included a mix of local Democratic groups, as well as the left-leaning group Public Citizen.

Rose Fabia, 66, a former employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said the event was a blatant example of corruption.

“These wealthy people, they’re just here to pay for access. That’s all it is,” she said. “And he’s taking advantage of it and saying, ‘How much are you gonna give me? How much you gonna pay for my crypto coin?’ It’s a joke. It’s corruption in our faces.”

One person at the dinner, Kendall Davis, sparred with protesters, rejecting their assertion that he is a blind supporter of Trump and implicitly advocating for his policies. Davis, a young Black crypto owner, said the industry has made him a multimillionaire after he previously was homeless. He characterized his attendance as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dine with a sitting president.

“I don’t feel any type of remorse for coming here. My dad is Black. He’s proud of me. My grandma is Black. She’s proud of me. They’re Democrats,” he said. “Nobody in my family has ever ate with the president. Let me say this: If it was Joe Biden or Barack Obama, I would’ve came, too.”

Other people spotted at the dinner included Sandy Carter, the COO of blockchain-based Unstoppable Domains.

Joining the protesters was Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who talked up legislation — the End Crypto Corruption Act — that he introduced this month with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. The measure would prohibit senior executive branch officials, including the president, from financially benefiting from issuing, endorsing or sponsoring crypto assets.

“The spirit of the Constitution was that no one elected would be selling influence to anyone because it’s to be government by and for the people, your constituents, not government by and for people who hand money across the table to you,” Merkley said.

David Ingram reported from San Francisco and Nnamdi Egwuonwu from Sterling.