What made you decide to go and attend this Meanpoint conference today? It's a big industry and we want to beat China at the industry. We're leading with crypto, we're leading with AI. And I really feel I have an obligation from the same as a president. I have to be able to make [00:00:16] sure that all of our industries do well. Crypto is a big industry. So Trump can say that he's just looking out for burgeoning industry, but we know that if he wasn't profiting, he wouldn't be wasting his time. with this meme coin. So lost in all of the chaos around the White House [00:00:32] Correspondents Dinner is this other event that Trump held on Saturday, and it was his meme coin dinner. So instead of focusing on the plainly corrupt nature of the event, let's instead talk about the collapse of both Trump and his meme coin and how it has made that [00:00:49] event a cheap ticket compared to last year's. So the top 29 qualifying VIPs to get a VIP reception invitation with Trump. Tickets for the special access requires being among the holders of Trump, right? The top holders of Trump, that's the stock thing, right? At last [00:01:10] year's conference, that meant holding an average of $3.28 million in the token. At this year's, the requirement was only $539,000, which is quite a drop. And that's a drop in value of more than 80%. According to an analysis from the Financial Times, the crypto gathering comes [00:01:29] as the president's token is languishing. Having dropped 95 % in value since its launch in January 2025, it's fallen dramatically from its high of $44 to just $2.57 as of Saturday. So that's [00:01:45] $44 to $2.57. So that's the figure for the highest tier at that dinner. And it's actually embarrassing right now. when you talk about the 297 coin holders who were given the more general admission. [00:02:02] So this is from New York Times reporter David Yaff Bellamy, and he decided to try and buy his way into the conference. And it was actually a lot cheaper than he thought it was gonna be. So after a little back of the envelope math, I concluded that I had overspent for my seat. [00:02:20] If I had bought $2,500 worth of Trump stock, On the first full day of the competition, I would have finished with more than enough points to make it into the top 297. Mr. Christiansen, the crypto investor finished in 207th place, one spot behind me. He said he bought his [00:02:40] coins on the crypto exchange by bit while simultaneously shorting Trump stock to hedge his bets. The whole exercise cost him only $500. So just a quick note, the reporter did note that he paid about $9,000 to secure his 206 spot, which would have been lower if he had invested [00:03:01] earlier to receive more points, which he didn't do, which compounded for those who held their tokens under the competition rather than selling. So the lower cost to entry was also evident by the total trading of the token, which was a fraction of what it was a year prior. So [00:03:19] investors could qualify for attendance at Saturday's event based on their standings by April 14th. And during the roughly month long contest, $1.35 billion was exchanged. The trading volume was far lower than in the period around the 2025 dinner, which generated 12.9 billion in [00:03:39] trading volume across five times as many participating wallets. JR, this is very encouraging. I really like this because like, During the break, was like, why are people still falling for meme coins? I guess they're not. And I like that, I like that for people. Yeah, this is the thing. [00:03:56] I mean, he started this whole thing when they asked him. The reason he's doing this, wants to beat China in the industry of crypto. What does that mean? I could be making a point here, but what does that mean to beat China in the industry of crypto? Especially when the point [00:04:14] of crypto is you're exchanging these Trump meme coins. So that means since we were finding out the loss of value of these particular meme coins, and you're supposed to be winning this battle. But really it's a quid pro quo event where it's a bunch of corruption being exchanged. And then even that value is getting dropped. That means your name, which is the whole point [00:04:33] of backing this whole thing, is losing value. But you're the one that's leading the charge and beating China in crypto. None of it makes sense, but also you suck at this. So if you already suck at the thing that you're supposed to be winning at, you're a liability. You're an anchor to this industry, as you like to say, that you're winning or looking to compete with [00:04:51] China against. Is China trading Trump crypto coins and they're winning with it? Are they making more money off of his stupid name than he is? It's weird. I think there's a level of he doesn't understand it fully. I don't either, I will admit to that. But also if there's supposed to be value being exchanged in it and you're not exchanging more value in it, that means [00:05:09] you're losing. Whether I understand the full capabilities of how this works or not, you sound like you're losing at this. um So why should we care? People who aren't paying thousands of dollars or in this case, a couple hundred to get in front of your face. Why would we [00:05:24] care that you're winning in this battle in this race for crypto? It's this ongoing talk to American people about how we should be caring about how much money. people should be making off of exchanging corruption deals in front of our faces. It's amazing that we're not like, [00:05:40] I need you to stop talking to me about this before some serious things happen here. We're just going to listen to them. This is outrageous, isn't it? And somebody should tell me how I'm wrong about this because I don't understand. No, it's the same thing how the regular American [00:05:56] people are supposed to care about the Dow being at whatever. We're supposed to care so hard about the Dow. We're supposed to care so hard about the fact that Trump is a terrible person and a terrible president and people keep trying to hurt him. And it's just like, can't care [00:06:11] about this. care about a lot of more, everything else I care about more than that. There's innocent people who are having their lives threatened by him. So it's really hard to just like. It's weird that they try to sell that to the American people. And the thing with crypto and money [00:06:29] schemes and things like that, the way that they're able to do that is by insinuating that everybody has access to that kind of money. Or everyone could possibly be the next millionaire or billionaire even. And the reality is rarely is that going to happen, especially for people like you're [00:06:48] not just going to become a millionaire without putting in some thought.