The top holders of President Donald Trump’s meme coin were rewarded Saturday with a lavish conference at Mar-a-Lago, where they received Trump-branded swag, listened to industry evangelists and scored facetime with the president of the United States.
The conference has much in common with the controversial dinner that Trump held nearly a year ago at his Virginia country club, where the president hosted top holders of his eponymous meme coin in a display of his willingness to profit from his office.
But more recently, Trump’s cryptocurrency has flagged in popularity, and its top buyer has sued the Trump family’s other crypto business. Amid those troubles, the self-described “crypto president” is offering loyal buyers of his coin new benefits. This time, investors could secure their spots on the Trump Coin leaderboard through purchases of the meme coin as well as by buying Trump-branded products like sneakers.
The top 297 on the leaderboard joined 18 “global superstars,” including boxer Mike Tyson, motivational speaker Tony Robbins and prominent crypto executives and investors, according to a website for the event. Guests received a Trump-branded fragrance, a commemorative poster and a “Fight Fight Fight Red Beauty Watch,” which typically retails for $499, promoters say. The top 29 VIPs received a “very, very special” talk about the history of Mar-a-Lago.
Trump said on Saturday that he views it as his obligation as president to make sure the crypto industry succeeds.
“It’s a big industry, and we want to beat China at the industry,” he said after a reporter asked why he attended the meme coin conference. “We’re leading with crypto, we’re leading with AI.”
Trump returned to office with the financial backing of the crypto industry, and he has wielded the powers of the Oval Office to legitimize cryptocurrencies, remove regulatory guardrails and push the Securities and Exchange Commission to adopt a more lax approach to enforcement. In that same period, a growing share of his family’s wealth has come from crypto businesses.
The $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins have been among the most controversial of the first family’s ventures because the currencies lack fundamental value and are driven by the celebrity of the president and the first lady. Trump and his family have made millions of dollars from transaction fees levied when people buy the coins.
The Trump coin has lost about 97 percent of its value since it launched around the time of Trump’s second inauguration, and the coin named after the first lady has dropped about 99 percent. Angry investors have complained on social media about losing money, and the designers of the Melania coin were accusedof a pump and dump scheme in court filings last year because of the coin’s swift rise and fall.
Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who has been one of the top holders of Trump’s meme coin, on Tuesday sued World Liberty Financial, another crypto venture co-founded by the Trump family. He alleged that the company secretly implemented tools to prevent the sale of his tokens after they became tradable in September 2025.
The Trump meme coin leaderboard currently lists “Sun” in the top slot. Sun and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment about whether he planned to attend the Mar-a-Lago conference. The White House and the meme coin conference organizers also did not respond to requests for comment.
“World Liberty Financial is not associated in any way with the meme coin,” said World Liberty Financial spokesman David Wachsman.
Last year, the White House said that Trump’s crypto dinner posed no conflict of interest because the president’s assets are in a blind trust managed by his adult sons. The White House did not publicly release a list of attendees for Saturday’s conference or last year’s dinner.
The announcement of the conference led to a brief surge in the price of the coin, prompting Democrats in Congress and ethics experts to raise concerns that the organizers are wielding promises of access to the president to financially benefit his family.
“It is essential that Congress fully understand the extent to which President Trump and his family are profiting off of his cryptocurrency ventures,” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Adam Schiff (California) wrote in a letter to Fight Fight Fight LLC, a Florida-based company that manages the meme coin. “Congress must also take steps to prohibit and prevent these egregious conflicts of interest.”
The venture has collected millions of dollars in crypto transaction fees from attendees eager to gain access to Trump, raising concerns that people are paying for access to the president. While presidents have long held private events with wealthy donors to fundraise for campaigns, those donations are subject to campaign finance laws intended to permit oversight and transparency.
Investors could qualify for attendance at Saturday’s event based on their standings by April 14, and during the roughly month-long contest, $1.35 billion was exchanged with 18,882 unique wallets participating, according to data from the crypto analytics firm Nansen. The token opened the contest at $2.93, spiked to $4.37 on March 13, and closed at $2.81 on April 14, still roughly 95 percent below its January 2025 all-time high of around $75.
The trading volume was far lower than in the period around the 2025 dinner, which generated $12.9 billion in trading volume across five times as many participating wallets.
The lawmakers raised concerns that the organizers are promoting the event and Trump’s meme coin by “dangling access to President Trump to potential attendees.” The lawmakers noted that the fine print of the event suggests that the president may not attend. The president attended the crypto conference on Saturday, before to flying back to Washington for the White House correspondents’ dinner.
This year’s event has received far less scrutiny than the crypto dinner last year, which prompted protests outside Trump’s golf course. Last year, government ethics experts also raised concerns about taxpayers footing the bill for Trump’s travel to the event.
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called the Saturday conference a “worse security and ethical disaster than the first memecoin event,” saying it is harder to discern who is attending this year than last year because the leaderboard this year discloses fewer details about the crypto wallets participating in the event.
“This weekend will provide a prime example of the level of corruption and profiteering that no other president would have even dreamt of engaging in, but Trump is comfortable doing so openly,” CREW said in a blog post.
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