Trump memecoin speculator says presidential dinner is costing him just $1,200

Morten Christensen says he and four crypto-loving friends will be attending the dinner next week being held for the top holders of President Donald Trump’s memecoin for just about $1,200 each. 

The five were among the 220 people with the highest time-weighted holdings of the memecoin in the last three weeks on a special leaderboard used to keep track of the biggest buyers of the cryptocurrency. While it took at least $54,500 or so in time-weighted holdings during that period to secure a spot at the event on May 22, the actual amount Christensen and his friends spent basically boils down to trading fees.

Their strategy was to buy the Trump memecoin and to short the exact same amount. Then they sold their Trump tokens and closed their short positions right after winners of the dinner were announced Monday, according to Christensen, who runs a site called AirdropAlert.com that tracks token giveaways used to encourage engagement.

“I didn’t even think it was in the possibility I’d go in to meet the president of the United States,” the 39-year-old Christensen said in an interview from Mexico. “We figured it won’t cost us that much to compete, we gave it a shot and we made it.” 

Made it to the $TRUMP dinner, now the hard part, convincing my wife to let me go pic.twitter.com/qff5nF0SGe— Morten ⏳ (@Mortpoker) May 12, 2025

The dinner with the president is taking place at Trump National Gold Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia. Trump will talk about the future of crypto at the event, according to the organizers. The top 25 holders will be eligible for a tour of the White House. 

Trump’s plan to host the event has drawn much criticism, with Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff demanding a federal ethics investigation into what they called “pay to play” scheme of “corruption and foreign influence,” since many of the traders in the coin appear to be from other countries. The Democrats also stalled legislation to regulate stablecoins due to concern about the Trump family’s expanding crypto businesses. 

Freight Technologies Inc., a tiny logistics company, said earlier this month it may raise up to $20 million to buy the memecoin to establish a Trump token treasury to promote commerce between the U.S. and Mexico. Meanwhile, a Chinese-linked firm named GD Culture Group said Monday it plans to line up to $300 million in funding to create a reserve made up of Bitcoin and Trump tokens. 

Christensen said he first bought the token in January, one hour after it was announced. He then sold it that same weekend for 30 times more than what he paid, making several hundred thousand dollars, he claimed. The coin’s market value ballooned to nearly $15 billion after its debut before crashing to about $2.7 billion currently, according to data compiled by CoinMarketCap.com.

“Then he announced the dinner, I ignored it at the start, I thought it would be very competitive,” Christensen said. “Then eight days before it ends, I saw the leaderboard. And it doesn’t take that much, I thought it would take $60,000 to $70,000.” A couple of days in, the group created a software program that would look at holdings changes on the leaderboard and try to predict which amount of holdings would ensure a placement in the top 220, Christensen said. 

As additional large wallets came into the picture in the final few days, the friends bought more tokens on Friday, “just to be sure,” Christensen said. He held about $250,000 worth the weekend the competition ended, he said.

Under the name “aird,” he ended up being No. 188 on the leaderboard, ensuring his spot at the dinner, Christensen said. On Monday, he received a notification that he won a seat at the dinner, and filled out a form, providing his information for a security check, according to emails reviewed by Bloomberg. He’s already booked his flight, he said.

Christensen said he knows about 20 other people coming to the dinner, so he might be doing some networking, “but mostly just have a good time.”

“It’s more like a fun trip with your friends to meet the president,” he said. “If we’ll get to meet Barron, it will be amazing.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com