Trump is hosting a dinner for the biggest buyers of his memecoin. The guest list is now set—and many of the winners are foreign nationals
For weeks, wealthy individuals have been scooping up the Trump family’s cryptocurrency in hopes of amassing enough to qualify for one of 220 seats at a dinner with President Donald Trump himself. In the words of Trump’s own website: “The competition is fierce. Own $TRUMP—or watch from the sidelines.” Now, the leaderboard is final and the winners from around the world are set to descend on Washington, D.C., to rub shoulders with the world’s most powerful man. So, who is going?
While the leaderboard is public, the identity of each winner—obscured by pseudonymous blockchain addresses—is not. But an analysis by Fortune revealed that 18 out of these top 25 holders have interacted with Binance, a foreign crypto exchange that excludes Americans, meaning they are likely foreign nationals.
Meanwhile, some of the winners—the top 25 of whom are entitled to attend an “ultra-exclusive private VIP Reception”—have publicly identified themselves or been identified by a crypto analytics firm. Here are three guests slated to go to the “Gala Dinner,” which critics have lambasted as an unprecedented example of corruption.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Chinese crypto billionaire Justin Sun
With more than $18 million in Trump’s memecoin, according to Monday prices, the top spot on the leaderboard is identified simply by the name “SUN.” The crypto analytics firms Arkham Intelligence and Nansen have said that the wallet is linked to HTX, a crypto exchange for which the billionaire Justin Sun serves as global adviser.
Neither Sun, who told Forbes in March that his net worth exceeds $40 billion, nor HTX responded to requests for comment.
The billionaire is a controversial figure in the crypto industry. Born in China, Sun founded Tron, a blockchain that hosted 58% of all illicit activity in crypto in 2024, according to a report from crypto analytics firm TRM Labs. (Illicit crypto volumes on Tron, however, declined by $6 billion from the year prior.)
Sun has found himself in the midst of numerous crypto debacles. Most recently, he allegedly pushed crypto trade outlet CoinDesk to spike a story on how the crypto billionaire bought and ate a $6.2 million banana.
Singapore crypto firm MemeCore
With about $17.5 million in Trump’s memecoin, the second largest holder on the leaderboard is the Singaporean crypto startup MemeCore, according to public posts from the firm and Nansen.
Founded in January 2024, the firm is building a blockchain for memecoins, or cryptocurrencies created as jokes without any inherent value, Ting Hsu, MemeCore’s chief business development officer, told Fortune. Trump himself is one of the most “iconic” memes, she said.
Hsu didn’t share exactly how the company is funding its Trump crypto investments, but she did say some of the money came from the company’s “internal treasuries” as well as from one of the startup’s anonymous cofounders, whose identity she declined to share. That anonymous founder will attend the dinner with Trump on May 22, according to Hsu.
The Memecore executive didn’t know who else was planning to attend the dinner and was also curious to see the guest list. “Why [do] you guys want to join this?” she asked.
Australian investor Kain Warwick
While he’s not one of the top 25 largest Trump memecoin holders, Kain Warwick, an Australian crypto investor, has made the top 220, according to The New York Times. (Warick did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.)
The founder of the crypto company Infinex, Warwick was playing basketball with his kids on a weekend afternoon in January when he saw on social media that the 47th president had apparently launched his own memecoin, according to his X account.
He didn’t know whether the cryptocurrency was legitimately Trump’s and worked feverishly to verify that it was real. He eventually did, invested some money, and went back to playing with his children.
But, as he was taking his kids to the beach, he doubled his bet. “Yesterday was a once-in-a-career opportunity,” he wrote, reflecting one day later on Trump’s cryptocurrency launch.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com