The team behind US President Donald Trump’s memecoin has announced a third event for his top tokenholders, just weeks after a report estimated that investors in the president’s crypto ventures had lost a combined $4.7 billion. The recurring dinners, which reserve seats for the largest tokenholders, have become a focal point in the wider debate over how a sitting president’s crypto ventures intersect with access, ethics and US digital asset legislation.

On Wednesday, the GetTrumpMemes website, which promotes the president’s memecoin Official Trump (TRUMP), announced a Nov. 22 dinner for the “top 185” holders in a post on its official X account. According to the site, Trump will appear at his Washington, DC golf club alongside three unnamed guests, with attendance determined by the top 185 memecoin holders as scored between Sept. 30 and Nov. 12. Memecoins such as TRUMP are crypto tokens whose value rests largely on community attention and branding rather than underlying utility.

The dinner will mark the third time Trump has gathered his memecoin supporters for a holder event, following a May 2025 dinner for 220 TRUMP holders at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, DC, and an April 2026 luncheon for 297 guests at the president’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.

Public Citizen loss estimate looms over announcement

In August, the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen estimated that investors in the Trump family’s crypto ventures were “$4.7 underwater” since 2022, with $3.2 billion of those losses attributed to the memecoin.

Market data showed that TRUMP’s price surged about 9% to $2.23 from $2.05 immediately after Wednesday’s dinner announcement. Trump launched the token shortly before his January 2025 inauguration, and its price climbed sharply to $70 before dropping below $20 within days. At the time of publication, TRUMP was trading at $2.06, roughly 97% below the $70 level it reached after its launch.

Holder dinners continue to draw ethics concerns

Many critics of the first holder event accused Trump of selling access to the presidency through “pay-to-play” schemes. Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron network and the top TRUMP holder at the time of the May 2025 dinner, held about $19 million worth of the token. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), whose chair was picked by Trump, later settled a lawsuit against Sun for $10 million.

According to Trump’s 2025 financial disclosures, the president reported $1.4 billion in crypto-related earnings, including from the TRUMP memecoin. A White House spokesperson referred Cointelegraph to the event organizers for comment.

“In the best case, the dinner is unethical and unconscionable profiteering off the presidency,” Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman told Cointelegraph. “People are buying the memecoin and eager to attend a dinner only because Trump is president. In the worst case, this is pay-to-play access to the president: spend enough on Trump’s memecoin and you may get a chance to whisper to the President of the United States about a preferred policy, enforcement action or requested favor.”

In a Thursday post on Bluesky, Senator Chris Coons called the memecoin event “corruption.”

Crypto ventures cloud CLARITY Act’s prospects

The dinner announcement came just a few weeks after lawmakers in the US Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, a bill expected to establish clear guidelines for financial agencies on the oversight and enforcement of cryptocurrencies. All Democrats present voted against the legislation, with some saying its ethics provisions are insufficient to address Trump profiting from the crypto industry.

“President Trump, his children, and his Cabinet are making billions of dollars in the crypto space, in part from bilking everyday Americans out of their hard-earned money,” said Senator Elissa Slotkin after her vote against CLARITY on Sept. 15. “I cannot in good conscience vote for any legislation that codifies that behavior from public officials.”

The Senate has a limited window to address CLARITY before the next session of Congress in 2027. Polls have shown Democrats favored to take majority control of the House of Representatives and Senate, leaving the Republican-led bill’s future uncertain. The Nov. 22 dinner is set to take place before that window closes, keeping the overlap between the president’s crypto ventures and US digital asset legislation in focus.