Trump Is Hosting Another Meme Coin Gala—The Price for VIP Access Is Down 90%

President Donald Trump is set to host another in-person event for his meme coin holders later this month at Mar-a-Lago, but in perhaps a sign of times, the price to attend is considerably lower than it was last year.

The team behind President Trump’s Solana-based token, which trades as $TRUMP, finalized the list of attendees on Tuesday, with the guest list based on a leaderboard tied to token holdings and other factors.

Last time around, a select group of attendees attained “VIP” status by each amassing millions of dollars’ worth of the tokens. But earning the VIP label for President Trump’s latest event, a luncheon and conference to be held for top holders, cost roughly 90% less this time around—down from approximately $3 million to around $300,000.

VIP status, the top level of access for the event, grants attendees a private “meet and learn” experience with “superstar” attendees like Tether’s Paolo Ardoino, retired boxer Mike Tyson, and Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood. That bonus reward, beyond access to the luncheon with President Trump, was granted to the top 29 registered $TRUMP holders who earned points based on time-weighted holdings of the token from March 12 to April 14.

Based on available on-chain holder data compared to the Trump meme team’s final leaderboard, at least one account that earned VIP status and ranked 12th overall—a Solana address beginning in “Ciz7y”—never held more than 114,212 $TRUMP tokens during the more than month-long snapshot period.

That amount, now worth around $318,000, peaked at about $473,000 when the token traded at $4.14 on March 15.

Other VIPs, like Solana address “2ciorM,” transferred in around 102,000 $TRUMP tokens on March 12 and made no other moves. Those tokens, now valued at $283,000, were good enough to rank the address 17th, well above the VIP cutoff.

Those sums are dramatically smaller than those seen for last year’s initial exclusive event for Trump meme coin holders, where the top finalists each held millions of dollars’ worth of tokens to earn VIP status, which conferred exclusive benefits. The final VIP holder for last May’s event, ranked 25th, had nearly $3 million worth of $TRUMP tokens around the time of the snapshot.

At that time, gaining VIP access to the first $TRUMP meme coin gala required around $4.78 million worth of the president’s official meme coin, on average. The top holder—an account labeled “Sun” that Tron founder Justin Sun confirmed was his—buoyed the group by possessing around $19 million in $TRUMP at the time of the snapshot last year.

The Tron founder, who earlier this week publicly bashed the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial business—a separate crypto venture, was again the top holder on this year’s meme coin leaderboard.

This time, though, the value of his account is only around $9.3 million, as the $TRUMP token’s price has fallen precipitously from its highs. He maintains a balance of around 3.3 million $TRUMP tokens, or 1.4 million more tokens than the first time around.

As it stands, the official $TRUMP token was recently trading around $2.80, down 29% in the last month and now 96% off its all-time high of $73.43 achieved shortly after launch. The token briefly jumped around 40% after the announcement of the latest in-person event, but has since erased those gains.

By comparison, during last year’s exclusive event, the token closed the snapshot day trading around $13.08—about 370% higher than its current trading price.

This time around, token holders were also awarded 10 points for every $1 spent on purchases of Trump-branded merchandise—like hats and watches—during the token-holding period, which is something that can’t be accounted for with on-chain data.

That bonus could have moved the needle for some prospective VIPs, but otherwise, it appears that holders needed to spend far less on $TRUMP tokens this year to gain special access.

Last year’s $TRUMP meme coin dinner drew scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers, who demanded an ethics probe into the invitation. Famously, Senator Elizabeth Warren called the event an “orgy of corruption,” alleging that people could use it to buy access to the president.

This year’s Mar-a-Lago event will require attendees to pass a background check, and ensure they are not residents of a KYC-watchlist country. According to the terms and conditions, the event, slated for April 25, may be cancelled for any reason, and does not guarantee the attendance of President Trump.

If Trump can not attend, or the event does not take place, then attendees will receive a Trump-themed NFT.