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Who’s on the Guest List for Trump’s Meme Coin Dinner?
Many guests at Trump’s meme coin dinner have something to gain. Others are anonymous. Here’s what we know about attendees.
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When President Donald Trump welcomes top holders of his meme coin to dinner Thursday night, he will be joined by the likes of “Ogle,” a pseudonymous hacker who told one outlet he will wear a bandana around his face to avoid being “doxxed.”
It’s a sign of the mystery surrounding the meme coin dinner, despite calls for transparency and concern about foreign investors buying access to the president.
Trump’s meme coin company last month announced that the top owners of the cryptocurrency would win an invite to dinner. Ethics experts say the dinner is unprecedented in its brazen offering of access to the president for profit. The average cost of admission was over $1 million, according to one analysis.
“At least let the American people know who has bought access to the president.”
Trump’s announcement revived interest in the $Trump project, which sends transaction fees back to its creators every time a coin is traded. Those fees have so far amounted to more than $320 million in total, according to the company Chainalysis.
Democrats plan to picket the dinner outside the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, and a group of senators held a press conference Thursday calling on Trump to at least make the guest list public.
“Release the names of the people who are going to be there,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said. “At least let the American people know who has bought access to the president. Release the names. If there is nothing wrong, if you think this is all aboveboard, then what are you hiding?”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the event was unrelated to Trump’s official duties in response to a question about the guest list Thursday.
“The president is attending it in his personal time. It is not a White House dinner, it is not taking place here at the White House,” she said.
Here’s what we do know about who is attending.
The most famous — or “infamous,” according to a competitor — guest at the dinner is Justin Son, the Chinese-born crypto billionaire behind the blockchain Tron.
Only two years ago, Son was facing down a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit and a reported Justice Department investigation.
After Son bought $75 million worth of tokens in a separate Trump crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, his fortunes shifted. The SEC paused its lawsuit in February.
Son expanded his holdings in Trump crypto ventures by snapping up roughly $23 million worth of the $TRUMP coin, which Trump announced hours before his inauguration. That won him the right to attend dinner with Trump on Thursday night.
It’s a remarkable twist for a man who, according to the Wall Street Journal, once avoided visiting the U.S. for fear of arrest. While Son has essentially bought himself a White House seal of approval via the $TRUMP coin, he cast the dinner as primarily a networking opportunity in a post on X.
In legal documents, the creators of the $TRUMP coin have cast it as more akin to a playing card rather than an investment. Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that another top buyer of the $TRUMP coin is a Singaporean company promising to “reignite global meme culture.”
That company, MemeCore, is sending a co-founder who goes by the name of Ice to the crypto dinner, according to several published reports.
Like several other investors in the $TRUMP coin, MemeCore’s purchases seem to be more an exercise in branding in the hype-driven world of crypto than an endorsement of the president himself.
“Donald Trump is more than a political figure; he is arguably one of the iconic living memes. His rise represents the power of memes to influence culture, perception, and movements — principles that align with MemeCore’s vision of a decentralized, community-driven future,” a company spokesperson said.
Another anonymous figure attending the dinner is Ogle, a so-called “white hat” hacker who has been involved in returning the crypto tokens looted during hacks back to their owners.
Ogle last year announced that he was signing on to another Trump crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, as an adviser. He claimed his compensation for that project is “minimal.” He has also acknowledged trading the $TRUMP coin but cast himself as ignorant about how much he has made.
In interviews about the dinner, Ogle has described himself as somewhat of a gawking outsider.
“Curiosity is literally it. I have no expectations; I’m just curious to see how it’ll go. I’m hoping it’ll be fun — and hoping they’ll serve McDonald’s,” he told the outlet Sherwood.
The involvement of Ogle and Ice highlights one feature of the dinner that has most angered critics. Trump has so far yet to release a guest list, and the public has only learned the true identities of members of a pseudonymous “leaderboard” in dribs and drabs.
Ogle’s involvement was grating for Murphy, the Democratic senator.
“He wears a mask, all the time. He says he’ll take the mask off when he meets with Donald Trump. But he has supposedly spent millions of dollars getting access to the president today,” Murphy said.
Independent analyses of the $TRUMP coin’s leaderboard have found that many of the top holders are based abroad, and the identities made public of several leaders have so far lined up with that prediction.
Vincent Liu, Sheldon Xia, Kain Warwick, and Oh Sang-rok are the founders of crypto companies with headquarters or operations in Taiwan, the Cayman Islands, Australia, and South Korea, respectively, according to various reports.
The British algorithmic crypto trading company Wintermute is also reportedly a large holder of $TRUMP coins, although it has not confirmed those reports or whether it will send a representative to the dinner.
Norm Eisen, a former ethics adviser to Barack Obama who has become a fierce critic of Trump with the group Democracy Defenders Action, told NPR that he saw Trump’s meme coin as an unprecedented opportunity for foreign interests to buy influence with the president.
“Foreigners and foreign governments are going to take advantage of that situation to put money in — expecting things in return,” he said.
Murphy speculated that the attendees could be sanctions targets, Persian Gulf princes, or representatives of Vladimir Putin. The coin’s website says that attendees will have to pass a background check.
Morten Christensen told Bloomberg News that he spent only $1,200 on a series of clever trades with friends that earned him a spot at the dinner, which used a time-weighted formula of $TRUMP coin holders to determine who was invited.
Christensen, who runs a website tracking the giveaways used to promote new digital tokens, cast his trip to the Trump golf course as something of a lark.
“It’s more like a fun trip with your friends to meet the president,” he told Bloomberg. “If we’ll get to meet [his son] Barron, it will be amazing.”
Another lucky ticket winner was Vincent Deriu, a young consultant who told the Wall Street Journal that he spent $116,000 buying $TRUMP tokens.
Deriu told the outlet he voted for Trump and often wears Trump-themed watches. On X, he cast himself as a relatively small investor. “I’m one of the outliers, just a normal guy, not a whale,” he said.
He also posted an enthusiastic message when he received an invite to the dinner: “We’re IN! LFG!”
