Top Trump Crypto Buyers Vying for Dinner Seats Are Likely Foreign, Data Shows
The majority of top holders of Donald Trump’s memecoin have used foreign exchanges that say they ban US users, suggesting many purchasers are based abroad
More than half of the top holders of President Donald Trump’s memecoin — who are jockeying for dinner with the president — have used foreign exchanges that say they ban US users, suggesting that many of the purchasers are based outside the US.
Buyers of the Trump token, a cryptocurrency the president began marketing days before his inauguration, drove sales higher in the past two weeks after its issuers announced an unprecedented promotion: More than 200 of the memecoin’s largest holders would be invited to attend a May 22 dinner with Trump at his Virginia golf club, while the top 25 would qualify for an exclusive reception beforehand and what the memecoin’s website describes as a “VIP” tour.
Now, an analysis by Bloomberg News shows that all but six of the top 25 holders who have registered on the website’s leaderboard used foreign exchanges that say they exclude customers living in the US. More broadly, at least 56% of the leaderboard’s top 220 holders used similar offshore exchanges. The prevalence of these likely foreign buyers echoes concerns that congressional Democrats have expressed about the ethics of marketing the coin with a promise of presidential access. And it raises questions about how attendees at the promotional dinner, who are publicly identified only by three- or four-letter usernames they’ve chosen, will be vetted.
Majority of Top Trump Token Holders Are Likely Outside the US
- Likely foreign wallets
- Likely US wallets
- Wallets from unknown locations
- Top 25 wallets — on track for Trump’s VIP tour
Source: Bloomberg analysis of SolScan data
Note: Data as of 10 a.m. US East Coast time on May 5. Usernames are those listed on the memecoin’s website and were chosen by wallet holders when they registered for the dinner promotion. One wallet that still appears on the leaderboard website’s top 25 is not shown here because it sold nearly all of its holdings on May 3.
In the website’s fine print, organizers say attendees must pass a background check. “We will also screen your wallet for KYC & compliance purposes. You are having Dinner with the President of the USA!” the website reads. (Wallets are digital tools that store the private keys owners use to access and manage cryptocurrencies. And “KYC” is a common term for the steps financial institutions take to know their customers.) The website provides no explanation of how such vetting would be conducted.
The memecoin’s promoters didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did White House officials.
In order to appear on the official leaderboard, those who’ve bought the memecoin have to register with its website, which says it ranks them based on the number of tokens and the length of time they’ve been held. Many large holders have yet to register. But a second Bloomberg analysis of all the biggest purchasers — regardless of whether they’re on the leaderboard — revealed that more than half of this broader pool of buyers also used foreign exchanges.
Read More: Trump Memecoin Shows Limits of Crypto’s Democratization Pitch
It’s possible that some US purchasers found ways to use foreign exchanges despite prohibitions – say, by using a virtual private network, or VPN, to mask a US-based IP address. Most exchanges say they take steps such as collecting users’ personal information to try to prevent such workarounds. The three foreign exchanges that top Trump coin holders used most often to fund their accounts or to purchase the Trump memecoin are Binance, Bybit and OKX, all of which have imposed restrictions on US users. (Bloomberg’s analysis found that six holders on the Trump coin leaderboard made purchases on OKX before the company launched a trading platform in the US on April 15. An OKX spokeswoman said that until then, the company did not allow purchases by US residents.) Representatives for Binance and Bybit didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Two of the three exchanges have run afoul of US law previously. Binance paid the US more than $4 billion after it pleaded guilty in November 2023 to violating federal anti-money laundering and sanctions laws through lapses in internal controls. OKX pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering violations in February and forfeited more than $420 million.
This is not the first time that Trump-related crypto ventures have attracted significant interest from foreign investors.
Justin Sun, a Hong Kong-based crypto entrepreneur, became an adviser to World Liberty Financial, a separate crypto project promoted by the president and his sons, after Sun announced that he’d bought tens of millions of dollars of that project’s proprietary token. Sun, who said at the time that he didn’t expect any favors from Trump in return for the investment, may also be a top holder of the president’s memecoin, according to a Bloomberg analysis of crypto wallet transactions.

Justin Sun, founder of blockchain platform Tron, in Hong Kong on May 8, 2020. Photographer: Calvin Sit/Bloomberg
World Liberty is promoting a stablecoin. Zach Witkoff, one of the company’s founders and the son of Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, announced at a conference on Thursday that the stablecoin would be used to close a deal between Binance and an investment firm founded by Abu Dhabi’s government. World Liberty executives didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“Congress should demand the President disclose who’s paying him tribute in the shadows to assess whether the public interest is being compromised,” said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a nonprofit interest group that has set up a “Trump Accountability War Room” online. Accountable found that at least 14 of the top 50 holders of World Liberty Financial tokens have also used cryptocurrency services that aren’t available in the US. Bloomberg’s own analysis found an additional eight wallets that did so. World Liberty disclosed in November that its initial $300 million offering was primarily being marketed offshore.
Many Top World Liberty Token Holders Are Foreign-Based
- Likely foreign wallets
- Likely US wallets
- Wallets from unknown locations
Sources: Accountable.US, Bloomberg analysis of Etherscan data
Note: Data as of 6:45 p.m. US East Coast time on April 30.
As the president, who once called Bitcoin a “scam against the dollar,” moves further into cryptocurrencies, his administration has begun to dismantle the regulatory and law enforcement teams that oversee these digital assets. Shortly after he took office, for instance, staff members who investigated crypto at the Securities and Exchange Commission were reassigned and many of their cases were dropped. In April, the Justice Department disbanded its crypto task force.
In a letter last month, Democratic senators Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren called for an investigation of the Trump coin dinner promotion by the US Office of Government Ethics. They said the May 22 event presents a “severe risk that President Trump and other officials may be engaging in ‘pay to play’ corruption by selling presidential access to individuals or entities, to include foreign nationals and corporate actors with vested interests in federal action, while personally enriching the President and his family.”
The Trump family benefits from increases in the memecoin’s price because a company it controls maintains a large stock of the tokens. Although the Trumps aren’t allowed to sell any coins for some time under the terms of the coin’s issuance, any fluctuation in the price changes their fortunes on paper. The April 23 announcement of the dinner caused the price to rise from around $9 to about $14 while 436 new transactions of more than $100,000 took place over the next five days. The largest of these transactions involved accounts interacting with exchanges that don’t operate in the US. (The price of the token has since dropped to $10.82 as of 6 p.m. New York time on May 6).
Huge Foreign Purchases Followed Dinner Announcement
- Likely foreign wallets on leaderboard
- Likely US wallets on leaderboard
- All other wallets
Sources: Dune; Bloomberg Analysis of SolScan data
Note: Data as of May 1.
To qualify for the dinner with Trump, coin holders must register a “self-custodied” wallet — one that’s fully controlled by its holder, rather than a third-party exchange.
Bloomberg analyzed the transactions of the top 220 wallets on the website’s leaderboard as of May 5 to determine whether their holders are likely foreign-based. A separate analysis examined all the self-custodied wallets that held enough Trump coins as of April 30 to qualify for a spot in the top 220, leaving aside any time-weighting. Many of the wallets with the largest holdings are not listed on the leaderboard, which suggests they have not yet registered or their time-weighted holdings may differ significantly from current holdings. Some may be strategically waiting to register.
While it is difficult to identify the people behind these accounts, there have been public clues for some. The entities at the top of the leaderboard have been swapping positions for the past few days — with at least one of them bragging about it online. The wallet called “MeCo” belongs to an entity called “Memecore,” which describes itself as an “EVM-compatible L1 multi-chain cross-staking mainnet secured by Proof of Meme.”
On X, the firm said: “We’re not just aiming for #1 on the $TRUMP leaderboard — we’re here to conquer the entire meme space.” Memecore has asked users to send it their Trump coins in order to climb the rankings. The coins will be returned to users with a bonus, the company said.
“The memecoin space is currently seen as stagnant — and we want to challenge that narrative. By showing up at this event, we want to signal that a meme is emerging again,” MemeCore’s Chief Business Development Officer Cherry Hsu said in a statement over Telegram.
The holder that Memecore is chasing at the top of the list has chosen the username “Sun,” and is using a wallet belonging to HTX, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of blockchain data. HTX has been linked to Justin Sun and lists him as an adviser. Sun himself, who has publicly acknowledged buying World Liberty Financial’s tokens, has so far not said whether he’s behind the wallet atop the memecoin’s leaderboard. He did not respond to requests for comment.
The wallet labeled “Sun” began amassing a total of $17.9 million worth of the Trump coin when it was initially launched in January. It has acquired $4.5 million worth since the Trump dinner promotion was announced.
The SEC sued Justin Sun in 2023, alleging that he worked with companies he owns and controls to engineer the offer and sale of unregistered securities. Sun’s attorneys denied those allegations and said the regulator’s claims went “too far and should be rejected.” In February, after Sun spent at least $75 million to buy World Liberty Financial coins, the SEC paused its case against him, saying it was in both sides’ interest to consider a potential resolution.