Last month, Donald Trump pushed the boundaries of government and financial ethics by announcing a contest: whoever bought and held the highest amount of the $TRUMP meme coin for an entire month would win an invite to a private dinner with the President. That dinner took place on Thursday at the Trump National Golf Course in Virginia, with attendees reportedly dropping nearly $394 million on $TRUMP in order to win the privilege.
According to an analysis by The Guardian of the winners’ wallets, over half of them lost money participating in this contest. But that’s only if you’re analyzing the wallets visible on the contest site’s leaderboard. The real money was being made elsewhere.
“Bet you 10 percent of dinner participants are doing this”
I interviewed an enthusiastic crypto trader who figured out how to win the contest without losing any money: buy enough $TRUMP to get onto the leaderboard – and then in a separate wallet on a separate exchange, buy $TRUMP perpetual futures that would be profitable if (or as he saw it, when) the value of $TRUMP dropped. Yes, he did The Big Short, except with Donald Trump’s meme coin. “Bet you 10 percent of dinner participants are doing this,” …