THE WASHINGTON POST: Meet ‘Ice,’ ‘Ogle’ and other crypto millionaires who bought a night with Donald Trump

When the creators of President Donald Trump’s meme coin announced last month that its top 220 buyers could join him for dinner at his private golf club outside Washington, the mostly anonymous investors of the Singapore-based crypto collective MemeCore raced to capitalise on the opportunity.

The group of roughly 60 members, many of whom live in China and Southeast Asia, quickly amassed $18 million worth of the coin, securing a seat at Trump’s dinner party next week — and contributing a share of millions of dollars in crypto transaction fees the Trump venture has collected since the contest was announced.

The collective intends to send a co-founder to the dinner with hopes of shaping Trump’s views on their industry, MemeCore chief business development officer Cherry Hsu said in an interview, identifying the co-founder only by his crypto nickname “Ice.”

“Trump is a very iconic meme character,” Hsu said, likening him to a viral internet legend. She said the members have joked that they hope the dinner includes Big Macs, famously from the president’s preferred fast-food chain.

The gala dinner at the Trump National Golf Club on Thursday will link the president to an unusual collection of deep-pocketed crypto players from around the world, some of whom have told The Washington Post they hope to influence his views on how their industry is regulated or otherwise capitalise on the presidential access.

The identities of the vast majority of the coin holders who were invited to the dinner after the contest ended Monday remain unknown to the public, with many using untraceable crypto wallets fueled by money from unknown sources. And when they meet the president, they may be able to stay that way, with one crypto investor saying he was told by the event’s organisers that no cameras or journalists would be allowed in the room.

At least six major holders of the Trump meme coin have emerged publicly. Some have announced invitations on social media posts or large purchases in financial filings, while others left unique markers on the blockchain, a public but mostly anonymised log of crypto transactions.

The meme coin dinner has drawn criticism from congressional Democrats, some of whom said in a letter Wednesday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the lack of identification for coin holders could allow “bad actors, including authoritarian governments and companies they control, to enrich the Trump family” and gain leverage over the president’s policy decisions. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) told The Post that the coin was “the most corrupt thing a president has ever done.”

Even some of Trump’s Republican allies, including Sen. Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), a crypto proponent, has said the event gives her “pause.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told NBC: “I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to charge people to come into the Capitol and take a tour.”

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly defended the president, saying in a statement: “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public - which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”

Since the gala was announced last month, crypto wallets linked to Trump and his partners have earned about $3 million in transaction fees, a Post analysis of data from the crypto platform Flipside found. Since Trump’s coin debuted in January, the president and his partners have received $312 million from crypto sales and $43 million in fees, the analysis found.

Concerns have been fuelled by the number of apparent foreign investors involved in the coin. Roughly half of the top 220 meme coin holders have received coins from crypto exchanges such as Binance that say they reject customers from the United States, suggesting they could be foreign buyers, according to a Post analysis that relied on data from cryptocurrency analytics firms Nansen and Arkham. Nineteen of the top 25, who will attend an “ultra-exclusive private VIP reception” with Trump and a “special tour,” bought coins from similar exchanges. (The event’s website previously said the tour would be of the White House, but more recent pages no longer specify where the tour will occur.)

GD Culture Group, a small technology firm with a Chinese subsidiary led by chief executive Xiaojian Wang, said this week it would buy Trump coins as part of a $300 million stock deal with an unnamed investor based in the British Virgin Islands. Wang said in a statement, previously reported by the New York Times, that the deal would help strengthen the company’s “financial foundation … as decentralised finance continues to evolve.”

The meme coin project is run by an affiliate of the Trump Organization and a Delaware-registered company called Fight Fight Fight, which together own 80 percent of the 1 billion coins. Bill Zanker, the man named on Fight Fight Fight’s registration filings, did not respond to requests for comment. The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.

The project’s website says 80 percent of the coins are locked up and will gradually unlock for sale over the next three years, slowly expanding the coin’s supply. Launched on Jan. 17, the meme coin’s price skyrocketed to $75 on the day before Trump’s inauguration but declined until the dinner contest announcement gave it a temporary bump. Sales of the coin, now worth around $13, help buoy the paper value of Trump’s stake and contribute to the Trump operation’s revenue.

Meme coins are novelty cryptocurrencies, typically named for jokes and trends, that “have limited or no use or functionality” and whose “value is driven primarily by market demand and speculation,” as the Securities and Exchange Commission said in February. Before Trump launched his own coin, he had voiced scepticism of a financial product whose value is “based on thin air.”

The value of Trump’s coin soared last month when his crypto operation said he would join the top coin holders for an “intimate private dinner.” A Post analysis last month found that 27 wallets acquired more than 8 million Trump coins, then worth about $100 million, in the days after the gala was announced.

The coin’s value has plunged from its January peak, leaving many small-time investors who bought around the time of Trump’s inauguration to lose much of their investment. The coin’s price has fallen roughly 15 percent since its peak on Monday, when the dinner contest ended.

The Trump team has nevertheless benefited from fees attached to transactions made through the meme coin’s official website, which features a leader board that ranks investors by the number of Trump coins they hold.

All dinner invitees must undergo a background check and investigation before attending, the event’s fine print says, meaning the Trump operation will know who the investors are even if they remain anonymous to the public. The terms and conditions also state that the event “may be cancelled for any reason” and that, if Trump unable to attend, the gala could be rescheduled or coin holders could instead receive a Trump non-fungible token, or NFT, that is tantamount to an online crypto trading card.

On Monday, the Trump team said invitees who didn’t sell their coins before the dinner would be given a limited-edition “Trump Diamond Hand” NFT. Even after the contest, the team said it would begin a new “reward points” program for coin holders, alongside its own leader board and set of loyalty badges.

For most of the people who poured money into the president’s meme coin venture, Americans can know only two pieces of information about them: a long string of code, known as their crypto wallet address, and the account’s self-chosen, four-character code name. The leader board’s top spenders include the crypto wallets “JIGL,” “Niu” and “REKT.”

Some coin holders have said they’ve made the guest list, including Sheldon Xia, the founder of BitMart, a crypto exchange registered in the Cayman Islands. On X this week he posted a message, written in Chinese, saying that he would attend the gala dinner and private VIP tour and that he was “proud to support President Trump’s pro-crypto vision.” The Post could not independently confirm the Trump administration had invited him or others who claimed to be on the leader board.

Freight Technologies, a logistics firm focused on U.S.-Mexico border shipments, said last month that it would raise up to $20 million from an investment firm, ATW Partners, to buy Trump coins in hopes they could offer the firm an “effective way to advocate” on trade.

In statements to The Post, the firm said the announcement had helped make the company “a voice for effective policy” but that, at least so far, it had not yielded any conversations with anyone inside Trump’s business or the White House. Though the company claimed to have bought $2 million in Trump coins, The Post identified a wallet belonging to Freight that showed they had spent roughly $1.2 million starting Sunday night, and the company later acknowledged they had spent only that amount.

The $1.2 million in coins brought the Freight wallet up to 250th on the leader board, just below the threshold that would have landed them a dinner invite. A Freight spokesman confirmed the company had not received an invitation to the dinner.

Among the buyers whose true identities remain unknown — making it impossible to know what kinds of business they might discuss with a man who has called himself “the first crypto president” — is a crypto trader known on X as ZielonoMi. ZieloniMi declined an interview request but posted a screenshot of a congratulations email sent to the top 220 Trump coin holders and wrote, in Polish, “I never expected that I could have access to this type of action.”

A crypto investor known as Ogle, who made No. 22 on the leader board with over 250,000 Trump coins worth about $3 million, told The Post he believed criticism of the dinner was “goofy” given that political figures solicit money in exchange for access all the time.

Ogle, known in the crypto world for his work in recovering stolen crypto funds, has for years concealed his name and face in public, wearing glasses, a hat and a mask. His cartoon avatar is also masked.

Ogle said he received a call this week from someone involved with the dinner laying out the rules, including that no cameras or journalists would be allowed into the event to protect attendees’ privacy. He said he would only remove his mask once the gala’s doors were closed.

Ogle has worked as an adviser for a separate Trump crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, that recently said its crypto coin would be used in a $2 billion transaction involving Binance and the state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX.

A World Liberty Financial spokesman told The Post that no one at the company is an elected official or government employee. An affiliate of the Trump family business holds a 60 percent stake in the company, according to its website. Trump’s son Eric attended the deal announcement this month in Dubai.

Ogle said he has no real motive for attending the event beyond curiosity over “who precisely is moneyed enough to attend.” He hopes “some dignitary comes, or a sheikh,” he said.

A longtime crypto enthusiast, Ogle said he “got into it for the cypherpunk ideology” and sometimes dislikes how the industry has evolved so hard into just “making cash.” But while he said he hopes the industry returns to its old values, like privacy and decentralisation, he’s also not above enjoying the perks of crypto wealth and elite access.

“Until that is the case I’m gonna play the game we’re playing,” he said. “That game right now is memes … and if I can win, I’m gonna win.”

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