Investors lost billions on Trump’s memecoin. Another gala won’t fix that.

Ahead of the next memecoin event, the “GetTrumpMemes” X account cheered retail investors on, encouraging them to buy more tokens that could increase their chances of attending the conference and gala. Teasing photo ops with boxer Mike Tyson and a keynote speech from Trump, the posts reminded investors that it was still a “close race” to get one of the most exclusive invitations and become a top-29 VIP. Those attendees get extra perks like a seemingly more expensive watch, on top of the “Trump fragrance,” trading card, and commemorative poster that everyone gets. David Krause, a finance expert at Marquette University, has been monitoring the Trump memecoin since its launch. In March, he analyzed the impact of promotional events on the token’s price. He found that not only did the upcoming gala fail to “reverse the long-term downward trend” since the first event, but the cards seem particularly stacked against investors long-term, since “approximately 80 percent of the token supply is controlled by Trump-affiliated entities” who may have no interest in the token’s market value. Those entities collect fees whenever the token is traded, benefiting from surges before events and reportedly earning more than $324 million in fees alone since the memecoin launched. “This level of concentration is highly unusual and widely considered a significant red flag,” Krause told Ars. Because insiders maintain significant control, they can prioritize potential personal gain over long-term value creation for investors, Krause said. CryptoRank reported that for every dollar insiders earned, investors lost $20, he noted. That plan essentially established “a structured exit strategy” for insiders who can sit on their holdings, cash in when Trump promotes events, and then sell off their tokens once Trump’s term ends, he suggested. That potentially leaves “underwater retail holders” stuck with depreciating assets, Krause said, and no more future dinners with the president to potentially spike the price and bail them out. Concerned about the apparent lack of investor protection, Krause has recommended additional research into on-chain wallet activity to “determine whether insider selling accompanies promotional announcement.” In his analysis, he noted that there’s also no roadmap for the Trump cryptocurrency. That isn’t unusual for a memecoin, but the token’s lack of utility and “heavy reliance on financial incentives” like promotional events “rather than tangible product development” is noteworthy, he said. In lieu of a roadmap, GetTrumpMemes posted an update on X claiming that “$TRUMP is entering its next phase of development, focused on liquidity depth, additional utilities, and disciplined long-term value creation.” The post proposed “three coordinated initiatives to improve market quality and strengthen the ecosystem” that were “being implemented.” Those efforts include offering rewards for participating in “Kamino vaults” that allow an algorithm to optimize trading fees, as well as a plan to unlock more tokens to pursue more “growth initiatives.” Krause told Ars that “the plans represent an attempt to pivot from pure speculation to a yield-driven ecosystem.” They include “a ‘Yield and Liquidity Plan’ by which holders can earn $TRUMP and stablecoin rewards through the Kamino treasury, alongside institutional-grade market structure optimization and strategic inventory management.” It’s the sort of plan that sounds good in an X post, Krause suggested. “However, independent analysts caution that despite these efforts, the token’s price reality remains bearish, with the recent event-driven rally still down roughly 99 percent from its peak, and any long-term reversal would require the token to decouple from political news cycles and develop real utility beyond speculative incentives,” Krause said. Essentially, for retail investors to profit in the long term, achieving peak prices cannot hinge on Trump throwing a big party at Mar-a-Lago. GetTrumpMemes did not respond to Ars’ request to comment. Robert Maguire, vice president of research for a progressive watchdog nonprofit called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has also been closely watching Trump’s memecoin, among other reported conflicts of interest. He told Ars that Trump has already outpaced the conflicts of interest Maguire’s group tracked during Trump’s last time in office. In particular, the memecoin launch just prior to Trump’s inauguration served as a clear signal that the president would be more brazen about using the office to enrich himself this term, Maguire suggested. But Trump’s crypto activity could grind to a halt as his approval ratings keep hitting new record lows. Voters are upset about his policies on tariffs, AI, and immigration. Additionally, his unliteral decisions causing escalations in the Iran War—and a dangerous threat that “a whole civilization will die” if his demands in the war weren’t met—recently spurred urgent calls for his impeachment from Democrats. As the president’s popularity wanes, his memecoins may come under more scrutiny, as it’s unclear who the wallet holders are and what value they’re deriving from holding some of the most high-risk tokens available. Maguire told Ars there’s “ample evidence” that retail investors “hope and intend to get something in return” for enriching the president, like a pardon or a business opportunity, for instance. There’s also a “foreign influence element,” Maguire said, noting that “more than 70 percent of attendees” of the first memecoin event who could be identified “were foreign.” Although the Trump memecoin website emphasizes that “no foreign Government Officials are allowed to attend” the upcoming event, there’s no knowing whose interests could be represented by extremely large memecoin purchases of unknown foreign entities seeking to enrich Trump, Maguire said. “We have this situation where the president is open for business, and people are showing up and personally enriching him, and they are getting things in return,” Maguire said. “And we are largely, in many ways, being left in the dark.” Should the Democrats reclaim power in the House of Representatives, Maguire thinks that even Republicans who have been hesitant to acknowledge Trump’s most blatant conflicts of interest could possibly back legislation to limit his family’s crypto dealings. “I feel pretty confident that this would be a priority for a new Congress,” Maguire said. “I say that with a huge sort of grain of salt because it is difficult in this era to imagine Congress actually doing something, but it is also entirely possible that this starts to gain a salience and that people start to realize it’s really sort of becoming a bipartisan issue.” Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) narrowed securities definitions in a way that could benefit the Trump family, The Guardian reported. By classifying “most of crypto-based assets as commodities, collectibles, payment tokens or ‘digital tools'” instead of securities, Trump’s crypto ventures will continue to be exempt from SEC oversight and disclosure requirements that might help the public track any potential conflicts of interest. None of that would be an issue, however, if Democrats drummed up support for two bills introduced last year that largely stalled without Republican support. Pointedly targeting Trump’s memecoin, the Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance Enforcement (MEME) Act would apply to the president and other senior officials, as well as their spouses and dependent children. If passed, they would be blocked from “benefiting from the issuance, sponsorship, or promotion of certain assets,” including “digital assets such as cryptocurrency or a memecoin.” That bill requires disgorgement and imprisonment of up to five years if a violation is found. It also “provides additional penalties for such prohibited activities if they involve bribery or insider trading.” When introducing the bill, Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) called out Trump’s memecoin while invoking a Richard Nixon quote: “The people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.” “They both would not be as profitable as they are if they weren’t attached to the president of the United States,” Maguire said. If efforts to ban Trump’s memecoin are successful, or if memecoin investors realize that there are no long-term profits on the horizon, “the TRUMP token may serve as a cautionary case for the risks of speculative assets tied to political figures,” Krause said. In the meantime, loyal investors will keep buying enough memecoins to qualify for events. One social media influencer, Nicholas Pinto, bought more than $360,000 in Trump memecoins, then called the first dinner “trash,” with “Walmart steak” on the menu. He told Fortune he’d be back for seconds and plans to attend the upcoming conference. Pinto previously told Fortune that he had no access to Trump during the memecoin dinner last year, which aligns with reports that the president only briefly dropped in, raising questions about why anyone would want to attend. It’s unclear how long Trump plans to be at this year’s event. Although he’s a featured speaker, the Florida gala is scheduled for the same day as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC, which Trump has boycotted in prior years but now plans to attend. In March, a White House official granted anonymity to speak freely told Politico that the gala was not locked in on Trump’s schedule. The White House did not respond to Ars’ request to clarify if it’s on his schedule now. As the next event approaches, questions remain about what kinds of deals might be struck at these gatherings to potentially influence the president. But perhaps the biggest sign that there’s something amiss lies in a question on the GetTrumpMemes website’s FAQ. “Is this real?” the fifth entry on the page asks. To which the organization profiting from the first memecoin that mixed cryptocurrency markets with political figures responded, “This is 100 percent real.”