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

President Donald Trump will host another in-person event for him meme coin holders later this month at Mar-a-Lago, but the price to attend may be significantly lower than last year.

The team behind President Trump Solana-based Token, which trades as TRUMP, finalized the list of participants on Tuesday, with the guest list based on a leaderboard tied to token ownership and other factors.

Last time, a select group of attendees achieved “VIP” status by collecting millions of dollars worth of tokens each. But earning the VIP label for President Trump’s latest event, a luncheon and conference held for top business leaders, cost about 90% less this time — from about $3 million to about $300,000.

VIP status, the highest level of access to the event, gives participants a private meeting and learning experience with “superstar” participants such as Paolo Ardoino of Tether, retired boxer Mike Tyson and Cathie Wood of Ark Invest. That bonus reward, in addition to access to lunch with President Trump, was awarded 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 data on the chain owners compared to the Trump meme the team’s final rankingat least one account that earned VIP status and finished in 12th place — a Solana address that starts with “Ciz7y” — never had more than 114,212 TRUMP tokens during the month-plus snapshot period.

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

Other VIPs, such as Solana address “2ciorM,” transferred approximately 102,000 TRUMP tokens on March 12 and made no other moves. These tokens, now valued at $283,000, were good enough to place the address in 17th place, well above the VIP limit.

These amounts are dramatically smaller than last year’s first exclusive event for Trump meme coin holders, where the top finalists each had millions of dollars worth of tokens to earn VIP status, which provided exclusive benefits. The last VIP holder for last May’s event, in 25th placehad almost $3 million in TRUMP tokens around the time of the snapshot.

That’s when he got VIP access to the first TRUMP meme coin gala averaged about $4.78 million in official presidential meme coins. The top holder – a account labeled ‘Sun’ which Tron founder Justin Sun confirmed was his– supported the group by owning approximately $19 million in TRUMP at the time of the snapshot last year.

The founder of Tron, who earlier this week publicly trashed the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial business– a separate crypto company, was once again the top holder on the meme coin leaderboard this year.

However, this time the value of his account is only around $9.3 million as the price of the TRUMP token has suddenly dropped from its peak. He maintains a balance of approximately 3.3 million TRUMP tokens, or 1.4 million more tokens than the first time.

As it stands now, the official TRUMP token recently traded around $2.80, down 29% in the past month and now 96% off all-time highs of $73.43 achieved shortly after launch. The sign short rose by about 40% after the announcement from the last in-person event, but has since erased those gains.

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

This time around, token holders also got 10 points for every $1 spent on purchases of Trump-branded merchandise – like hats and watches – during the token ownership period, something that can’t be explained with on-chain data.

That bonus could have moved the needle for some potential VIPs, but otherwise it seems like holders would have had to spend a lot less on TRUMP tokens to get special access this year.

Last year’s TRUMP meme coin dinner drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers demanded an ethics investigation into the invitation. Famously, Senator Elizabeth Warren is the event an ‘orgy of corruption’, claiming that people could use it to buy access to the president.

For this year’s Mar-a-Lago event, participants will be required to pass a background check and ensure that they are not residents of a country on the KYC watchlist. According to the terms and conditions, the event, scheduled for April 25, may be canceled for any reason and does not guarantee President Trump’s attendance.

If Trump cannot attend, or the event does not take place, participants will receive a Trump-themed NFT.