To get into an exclusive dinner with President Donald Trump later this month, investors would have to spend roughly $700 buying his meme coin. Last year, the cost of admission for a similar event was roughly $59,000.
Crypto products tied to the president have cratered in value in the days following the midterm elections, as the president’s declining political power translated into declining uptake in the financial products branded with his name. Democrats, who are about to gain subpoena power in the House and Senate, have also pledged to investigate Trump’s crypto ventures, further contributing to the red.
$WLFI, the “governance token” of the Trump family crypto firm World Liberty Financial, hit an all-time low in public trading after Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) demanded that the company preserve its records. The meme coin sank to $1.11 after hitting $40 last year.
Sign up for The Stakeout, The Sun’s Congress newsletter you actually want to read.
Trending
MELANIA, the first lady’s meme coin, had already fallen from $8 in January 2025 to less than $1 by March 2025. But its value was nearly halved again after the midterms and is now down roughly 99.6% from its peak.
The declines mean even greater losses for the millions of investors and Trump supporters who purchased the crypto products since the president’s second inauguration. Zach Everson, the research director at the watchdog group Public Citizen, previously calculated that retail buyers had lost $4.7 billion in Trump-linked crypto products.
“This is all now worthless. It’s the lame-duck period of Trump’s crypto investments: His political influence is waning and so is interest in his crypto offerings,” Everson said. “Not that there should have been any doubt, but these price drops clearly show how much the market for Trump’s crypto products relies on his political power.”
A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial declined to comment. The White House did not return a request for comment.
Trump’s net worth has still risen significantly over the course of his second term. Forbes has estimated that the president is now worth $3 billion more than he was before his second term, although that amount fell by roughly $200 million after the midterm elections in which Republicans lost both branches of Congress.
The president reported earning $57 million from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company he co-owns with his sons, and another $635 million from the Trump meme coin, $TRUMP. Trump sold the marketing rights to the meme coin, which gave him some legal distance from the company’s activities.
On CBS News on Sunday, the president defended his financial gains while in office and rejected the suggestion that he was involved in making decisions.
“My sons run the company. It’s hard to say to them, ‘Don’t do anything anymore for four years because I’m president,’” Trump told CBS. “Every president has a problem … This is true for every president.”
Still, congressional Democrats are gearing up to investigate Trump’s crypto ventures.
The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which Blumenthal is expected to lead, is likely to delve deep into who Trump’s firms have been doing business with internationally and who had benefited from policy decisions, according to Corey Frayer, the director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America and a former aide to Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee.
Democrats on the banking and financial services committees, meanwhile, will probably want to examine whether the president has used his leverage over independent agencies to benefit his businesses on behalf of his crypto firms, as well as the pardons he has issued that appear connected to his crypto deals, Frayer said.
“I expect quite a lot of questions about World Liberty Financial,” said Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “One has to ask what the value of these things ever were other than to curry favor with Donald Trump?”
Nick Pinto, a 26-year-old crypto investor who invested $450,000 in the Trump meme coin but is still planning on going to the dinner this month, called the price drop “ridiculous.”
“I just realized it’s at an all-time low,” he said in a text message. About the dinner, he added, “The minimum Trump coin gala dinner holding requirement is what I usually spend when I go out to dinner lol.”
Author
