US President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend a November 22 dinner for the 185 largest holders of his Official Trump memecoin, adding another high-profile event to a crypto project that has drawn scrutiny over access, ethics and investor losses.
The dinner will take place at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, DC, according to the GetTrumpMemes website, which promotes the TRUMP token. Trump is expected to appear with three guests who have not been identified. Eligibility will be determined by wallet holdings recorded between September 30 and November 12.
The announcement makes this the third gathering of Trump’s memecoin supporters. The first was a dinner in May 2025 for 220 holders at the same Washington golf club. In April 2026, Trump hosted a luncheon for 297 guests at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. The latest event is smaller by the stated number of attendees, but it again links ownership of a speculative digital asset with the possibility of meeting the sitting US president.
The announcement comes after renewed attention to the financial performance of Trump family crypto ventures. Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, estimated in August that investors in those ventures were collectively “$4.7 billion underwater” since 2022. It attributed $3.2 billion of that amount to the TRUMP memecoin.
A token tied to presidential access
A memecoin is a cryptocurrency generally associated with a person, idea or online community rather than a traditional business or cash flow. Its value can move sharply as public interest changes. Official Trump was launched shortly before Trump’s January 2025 inauguration. The token initially climbed to about $70, then fell below $20 within days.
The dinner format has prompted criticism because access is based on the amount of TRUMP held. Critics of the first event described the arrangement as a possible “pay-to-play” system, arguing that participants could obtain proximity to the president by buying enough of the token.
Justin Sun, founder of the Tron network, was the largest holder at the May 2025 dinner, with roughly $19 million worth of TRUMP at the time. The Securities and Exchange Commission later settled a lawsuit against Sun for $10 million. The source material does not state that the settlement was connected to the dinner.
Trump’s 2025 disclosures reported $1.4 billion in crypto-related earnings, including income connected with his memecoin. The White House referred questions about the new dinner to its organizers.
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman told Cointelegraph that, in his view, the event was either unethical profiteering from the presidency or a mechanism for purchasing access to the president. Senator Chris Coons also described the event as “corruption” in a Thursday post on Bluesky. These are critics’ assessments, not findings stated by a court or regulator in the source material.
Political consequences for US crypto legislation
The dinner announcement also arrives during a dispute over the future of US cryptocurrency regulation. Just weeks earlier, the Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity, or CLARITY, Act. The bill was expected to establish clearer responsibilities for financial agencies overseeing and enforcing rules for digital assets.
All Democrats present voted against advancing the legislation. Some lawmakers said its ethics provisions did not adequately address the president’s family and administration profiting from the crypto sector. Senator Ellissa Slotkin said after her September 15 vote that she could not support legislation she believed would formalize such conduct by public officials.
The Senate has only a limited period to consider CLARITY before the next congressional session begins in 2027. The source material says polls showed Democrats favored to win control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, creating uncertainty about the bill’s prospects. The link between the memecoin controversy and the legislation is therefore political as well as financial: lawmakers are debating not only how digital assets should be supervised, but also how conflicts of interest involving public officials should be addressed.
Current market picture
Moneyiar market data at 09:24 on October 3, 2026, showed Official Trump (TRUMP) at $2.0583903802, down 2.61% over 24 hours and 2.18% over seven days. The token was reported at $2.06 in the source material at the time of publication. Cointelegraph reported that TRUMP briefly rose about 9%, from $2.05 to $2.23, immediately after the dinner announcement on Wednesday.
The later Moneyiar reading indicates that the token was again near $2, underscoring the difference between a short-lived reaction to news and the price recorded at a later time. The market data describes price performance only; it does not establish why the token moved.
