President Donald Trump’s meme coin saw a brief price spike as the crypto firm behind it promoted a major perk for investors: a “gala dinner” attended by the president himself.

But as the company encouraged the public to purchase $TRUMP, the insiders who control the biggest share of the meme coin have prepared to offload substantial portions of their holdings, according to The Washington Sun’s review of public crypto transactions.

Since Sept. 1, the single biggest owner of the cryptocurrency has transferred roughly $70 million worth of $TRUMP to an account that would enable sale of its coins. Experts say such a move would be a necessary first step for whoever controls the creators’ shares to dump the meme coin.

The previously unreported transactions have intensified criticisms that those behind the meme coin are aiming to take advantage of Trump’s presidency, as ethics experts remain alarmed by what they see as a president trying to sell a private crypto product.

Trump personally made $1.4 billion on his crypto investments last year, more than $600 million of which came from his meme coin, according to his White House financial disclosures. Zach Everson, the research director at the watchdog group Public Citizen, has calculated that retail investors simultaneously lost $4.7 billion on Trump’s crypto ventures overall.

The recent transfers appear timed to take advantage of the announcement of the gala, which created a rare price bump for a crypto whose value collapsed almost entirely not long after it first debuted.

In a spike of activity, the largest account holder transferred $27 million worth of tokens on Sept. 1, $26 million on Sept. 6, and $18 million on Sept. 20. That enabled their sale just as the crypto company announced plans to hold a gala, attended by Trump and “3 Legends” who have not yet been named, at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. The winners will be chosen based on a formula that considers who buys the most $TRUMP in the next two months.

The beginning of the contest triggered a brief spike in the meme coin’s price, from around $2.05 to $2.23, and higher than the $1.50 value $TRUMP was trading at for much of the summer. Even that seemingly small a swing in the price could have translated into millions of dollars in profit on the 31 million tokens released since September. The bump has been short-lived, with the price settling back at $2.04 on Tuesday.

The precise identity of the largest account holder is unclear. However, that account holds the vast token pool set aside for the coin’s creators, according to Everson. It’s possible that the rights to some or all of those tokens have since been sold or transferred to another entity.

“Regular buyers are urged to hold for a shot at dinner with the president, while tokens reserved for the coin’s creators head for the exits,” Everson said. “Tactics like this help explain how investors in Trump’s crypto ventures are billions underwater while he’s richer than ever.”

A White House official pushed back on the criticism. The upcoming gala will feature the president and bills itself as “the most exclusive dinner in the world,” but the event invitation also says: “No attendees will be granted a private meet & greet with the President.”

“It is difficult to credibly characterize this as ‘buying access’ to the President when the event organizers have expressly said that no attendee will receive a private meet-and-greet with him,” the official said in a statement. “Even the reporting on prior events found that attendees described themselves primarily as crypto hobbyists and fans. This is a private event — not a government function — and there is no promise of official government action in exchange for attending.”Bill Zanker, a longtime Trump associate who reportedly launched the Trump meme coin, declined to comment.

Based on how much the president earned from his meme coin, sales so far this year could add another $192 million in profit on top of the $635 million he made last year, according to Corey Frayer, who served as senior adviser to former SEC chair Gary Gensler, who is now the director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. The company behind the meme coin does not publicly disclose the precise payment arrangement for the president.

“What it looks like is they announce the competition for the dinner, and it drives the meme coin market up so they can sell more fake tokens at even higher prices,” Frayer said. “I don’t know how else you can interpret the transactions.”

Kevin Mercuri, CEO of the public relations agency Propheta Communications, was a spokesperson for Zanker but stopped representing the Trump associate in early 2024. He said he thought Trump’s gala events could have had “positive effects” for the MAGA base when a similar dinner was held last year, but “today the event seems tone-deaf” when “the nation is embroiled in a dead-end war and facing a widespread affordability crisis.”Nick Pinto, a 26-year-old crypto investor who has lost $400,000 on the Trump meme coin, said he “was shocked” by a copy of the large meme coin transfers sent to him by The Washington Sun. He did not know the owner’s identity but suspected it was Zanker. In a text, he said: “The grift continues until morale improves.”