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Because of a quirk in the rules, some participants vying to dine with the president benefited from dumping the Trump family’s memecoins rather than accumulating them.
May 12, 2025, 7:32 p.m. ET
President Trump and his business partners promoted it as the world’s most “EXCLUSIVE INVITATION” — a dinner with the president of the United States for the cryptocurrency investors who bought the most of his family’s memecoin, called $TRUMP.
But as the unusual contest came to a close on Monday, at least 17 of the 220 winning bidders had figured out a way to effectively outsmart the sponsors of the contest.
These crypto investors had secured an invitation to the dinner even though their online wallets showed that they held zero of the memecoins, a type of novelty digital currency often based on a joke or mascot.
That is because of a quirk in the rules: The winners were selected based on the average number of coins they held during the three weeks the contest was underway rather than their total at the end of bidding.
Participants expected the price of the coin to crash as soon as the contest ended. And it did just that on Monday afternoon, plunging by 6.5 percent once the winners were announced. By that point, nearly 20 of the contestants had sold off or transferred all their $TRUMP holdings, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
These traders had managed to benefit from the surge in price driven by the contest’s promotion and still secure a seat at the dinner, set for May 22 at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia.
