Most $TRUMP Holders Sold Before Gala Dinner, Triggering Ethics Concerns

• The five wallets of the top 10 wallets transferred their balances to addresses tagged by Solscan as centralized exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance
• Democratic Senators launched an ethics probe over the dinner, citing various risks that President Trump and other officials may be involved in ‘pay-to-play’ corruption

The $TRUMP holders who were invited to the exclusive gala dinner held none of the tokens in the wallets by the time they attended the dinner at Trump National Golf Course on May 22

A report from Solscan reveals that only eight of the top 25 VIPs kept the balance of $TRUMP coin the day after the dinner. The majority of the registered addresses had so far transferred tokens to centralized exchanges just some days after the May 12 snapshot

One of the holders who held the balance was Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron network. The founder’s wallet held 1.43 million $TRUMP at the time of the snapshot and is still holding that with a value estimated at around $18.8 million

On May 23, Justin Sun posted on X that, being a top holder of TRUMP and a proud backer of the President, it was an honor to attend the Gala Dinner hosted by him. The second top holder of the token was associated with MemeCore, and it is also maintaining its complete balance from May 12

The Pay-for-Play Tactic

The five wallets of the top 10 wallets transferred their balances to addresses tagged by Solscan as centralized exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance. One of them transferred the token to an account named the Wintermute hot wallet

The wallets that transferred their tokens will lose a limited edition of the diamond hand NFT, which can only be earned through maintaining their leaderboard balances up until the dinner. Some analyst says that their investments were clearly a “pay-for-play” tactic to meet the president

Protests concerning fears of foreign influence and crypto corruption took place at the event. Also, before the event, some Democratic Senators launched an ethics probe over the dinner, citing various risks that President Trump and other officials may be involved in ‘pay-to-play’ corruption by selling presidential access

However, $TRUMP is 2.29% up in the last 24 hours and trading at $12.79. But the market capitalization is down by 6.26% and is at $2.55 billion

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