President Donald Trump prepares to board Air Force One on his way to Mar-a-Lago for a luncheon with holders of his $TRUMP meme coin. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Several hundred of the top Trump meme coin holders converged on Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, and all they got were Trump watches and a rambling speech.
Then the price of the coin dropped to its lowest level ever.
Donald Trump launched the $TRUMP meme coin (and the associated $MELANIA meme coin) just three days before his second inauguration. The price of the coin immediately rocketed past $74, giving it a total market capitalization of around $15 billion —a rather absurd figure for a brand new digital asset that can’t actually be used for anything. The coin has no inherent value. It has no transactional use. It essentially functions as a digital endorsement of Trump—so perhaps fittingly, it’s price has since fallen even faster than the president’s approval ratings.
It’s market cap has now collapsed to just $583 million—a decline of about 96 percent from its peak. The price of a single coin has fallen nearly to its all-time low, languishing around $2.50 Tuesday.
Nearly a year ago, $TRUMP’s website offered the top 220 coin holders an exclusive soiree at his Virginia golf course and the top 25 holders a VIP tour of the White House. (The White House tour offer disappeared after garnering negative attention.) That event attracted various high-flyers—and protests—but Trump offered only desultory comments in a speech that apparently left some holders disappointed they hadn’t received the level of access they’d hoped to purchase.
Last weekend, Trump tried again. The top 297 investors in the coin were invited to Mar-a-Lago for a “luncheon” as part of a conference, vaguely centered on “crypto,” that featured the likes of Mike Tyson and Tony Robbins. Trump once again put in an appearance. The full speech isn’t publicly available, but you can get a sense from an array of snippets posted online. One brief video from an attendee shows the president rattling off his well-worn line about the US being the “hottest country anywhere in the world.”
Trump did discuss the crypto industry. “They noticed I that was doing so well, I had a poll where I was almost at 100 percent with all of the crypto,” Trump says in one clip, waving his hands vaguely. According Decrypt.co, a crypto industry blog with a reporter at the event, Trump also talked about Iran, employing some jokes he had previously used.
“The speech was useless like last time,” Morten Christensen, a $TRUMP coin investor, who runs the crypto-focused website airdropalert.com, told the Wall Street Journal. “But the event is much better organized, higher quality all around.”
Attendees didn’t seem enraptured by the president’s soaring rhetoric—they reportedly were taking selfies during his speech. But they did seem delighted that he spent so much more time at the event than last year. Guests at the event told Decrypt.co that many of the attendees were foreigners who had apparently flown in for the gathering.
Trump also met separately with the top 29 holders of the meme coin, saying positive things about crypto and talking about China and AI.
In a brief interview from the tarmac at the airport after the event, Trump did not appear particularly engaged or interested in the subject. Asked why he had attended, he failed to mention his own coin and gave a rambling answer that, again, trailed off into claims about the US leading China in terms of AI technology.
The event appears to have been far less exclusive that last year. There were more attendees this time around, and the overall cost of attending was dramatically lower—thanks in part to the lower coin price. On his own blog, Christensen wrote that the competition was less fierce this year and the financial risk involved in purchasing enough coins was as low as $10,000.
A New York Times reporter attempted to gain entry by purchasing $TRUMP and, after spending $9,500, did, in fact, qualify. (He ultimately concluded that he could have qualified by purchasing far less.) But after a background check, he was told he could not attend because the event was not open to press.
In the hours before the event, the coin’s price rose as high as $3.13. But not unexpectedly, following the event, the price once again cratered.