A year ago, hundreds of tuxedo-clad crypto investors descended on the Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia, marching past crowds of protesters to claim an expensive prize — dinner with the president. They were the winners of a contest that offered access to President Trump in exchange for investing in his $TRUMP memecoin.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump did it all over again, welcoming an even larger group of $TRUMP investors to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., for a daylong event marketed as “The Most Exclusive Conference In The World.”
But circumstances had changed.
Once hailed as heroes by crypto traders, Mr. Trump and his family have come under fire over the plunging value of their digital coins, the complex financial maneuvering of one of their crypto companies and an escalating business dispute with a billionaire crypto partner. As shuttles ferried the investors to Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, the price of $TRUMP hovered at $2.83, down about 80 percent from last April.
Even I managed to win a seat. Six weeks ago, I approached my editors with an idea: Would The New York Times give me a few thousand dollars to buy $TRUMP? My plan was to write about the event and then sell the coins, donating any profits to charity.
While I report on crypto for a living, I’m no day trader. But with my bosses’ blessing, I was soon funneling thousands of dollars from my bank account to a crypto app called Phantom, clicking past boldface warnings about scams, and frantically Googling for ways to override deposit limits and other guardrails meant to protect me.
It did not turn out to be a profitable investment. Memecoins, a novelty product based on viral jokes or celebrity mascots, are notoriously volatile. But my $TRUMP purchases offered a window into the exhilarating highs and frustrating lows of participating in Mr. Trump’s crypto ventures, at a time when some industry experts have grown pessimistic about their future.