More than 200 rich, mainly anonymous crypto buyers come to Washington on Thursday for dinner with President Donald Trump. Admission price: $ 55,000 to $ 37.7 million.
This is how the 220 winners of a competition to meet Trump spent on his volatile cryptocurrency token, $ Trump, according to an analysis of the Nansen blockchain analysis company.
Top $ Trump coins at a specific time – determined by the dinner organizers – obtained a seat.
In total, the winners spent $ 394 million on Trump’s official cryptocurrency, Nansen noted, although some have sold parties or all their participations since the end of the competition. The amount varied considerably according to expenditure, the first seven winners each spending more than $ 10 million and the last 24 spending less than $ 100,000. A third of the winners – including 67 – spent more than a million dollars, according to research. The average winner spent $ 1,788,994.42.
Like many coins, the value of $ Trump fluctuates wildly, according to CoinmarketCap, which follows the prices of cryptocurrencies. Nansen followed how many of the competition winners spent on their $ Trump when they bought it.
The 220 best winners of the competition were invited to the optional dinner of the black tie at the National Trump Golf Club Washington, DC, while the competition website says that Trump “appears at dinner as a guest and not soliciting funds,” also says that 80% of the Trump corner project is held by two companies affiliated with Trump, CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight LLC.
The personal cryptocurrency and the associated competition, which ended last Monday, add to the litany ways that Trump seemed to use the office of the presidency to personally enjoy. His commercial interests are in a trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr., and he intertwined many of his family businesses with his activities as president, including the holding of events, such as cryptographic dinner, in his social clubs and issuing exclusive political declarations on his social social application.
Trump’s cryptocurrency is also earning money for groups attached to Trump who simply created it while being exchanged. For each currency of $ Trump that is exchanged, transaction costs are taken. Chainalysis, another research firm on cryptocurrencies, said that the Trump $ play had made nearly $ 900,000 in transaction costs during the first two days of the announced competition.
While most federal employees are legally prohibited from using their office for financial purposes, the president is largely exempt, said Dan Weiner, director of elections and the government program at Brennan Center for Justice, in NBC News.
“The president is not subject to the general ban on conflicts of interest which affect almost all the others who work for the federal government,” said Weiner.
“In general, it is quite wild even according to the standards of the first Trump administration, when you had a variety of people doing business in the president’s hotels. It goes far beyond, but that does not necessarily make it illegal for him,” he said.
The White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement: “The president is working to get good deals for the American people, not for himself. President Trump only acts in the best interest of the American public-that is why they massively re-elected it to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses.”
Even the winners at the bottom of the ranking spent much more than the legal limit of an American to make a donation directly to a political candidate, $ 3,500.
The best expenditure revealed Tuesday as Justin Sun, a cryptographic entrepreneur of Chinese origin who told Forbes in March that he had become a citizen of the small island nation of Saint-Kitts and Nevis. Sun was continued by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but this case was interrupted under the Trump administration.
The identity of most of the other winners in the competition is largely private, known only by their pseudonymous nicknames and their cryptocurrency portfolio addresses. However, the majority of participants seem to be foreign nationals, according to Molly White, an independent cryptography researcher who wrote on the competition.
White examined the transactions of each winning portfolio when they crossed various Crypto exchanges, and noted when the holder seemed to use an exchange which did not legally allow citizens. Of the 220 portfolios linked to the winners of the competition, including 158, or 72%, seem foreign, said White at NBC News.
An investigation by the New York Times reported that the ranking included people representing cryptography companies in Singapore and Australia.
The prevalence of non -American citizens among the winners of the competition is notable, because it is generally illegal for people who are not American citizens to donate to American political candidates, Weiner said.
“It is an incredible contrast. We have very strict laws that prohibit foreign nationals from making campaign donations. So the great irony here is that many people who buy this currency would not be eligible to donate $ 100 to the president’s campaign, “he said.
“We have a variety of laws designed to prevent an excessive foreign influence on our policy, something that the two parties are suitable is a legitimate thing to try to avoid. And yet you have this,” he said.
