President Donald Trump confirmed that a private dinner will be held on May 22 at Trump National Golf Club in Washington for the top 220 holders of his memecoin, TRUMP. 

Trump made the announcement in a social media post on May 5. The event, organized by Fight Fight Fight LLC, a Trump-affiliated entity, will admit holders based on a leaderboard tracking time-weighted average balances between April 23 and May 12. 

Gala dinner

According to previous reports, the top 25 wallets will receive VIP access, including a photo opportunity with Trump and a guided tour. 

All attendees will also receive a commemorative non-fungible token (NFT) minted on Solana. If the event is canceled, the NFT will still be issued in lieu of attendance.

Participants must cover their travel and lodging, and no guests are permitted. Eligibility is restricted by OFAC guidelines, which exclude nationals from sanctioned jurisdictions such as China, Russia, and Iran. Entry is open to non-US citizens otherwise.

According to CryptoSlate data, the Official Trump token (TRUMP ) was trading at $11.21 as of press time, up 3% over the past 24 hours. 

Market volatility

The team behind TRUMP announced the gala dinner days after a major insider unlock on April 20 initiated a daily emission cycle for TRUMP tokens. 

According to on-chain data, insider wallets labeled CIC Digital began receiving approximately $3.8 million worth of tokens daily, part of a broader unlock schedule running through April 2028. 

This distribution follows an earlier $1.54 billion tranche released in January and a $311 million transfer to insiders on April 19.

On April 29, 1.346 million TRUMP tokens worth $19.5 million were transferred to Binance, OKX, and Bybit, further fueling speculation of insider activity tied to price performance. 

Blockchain analysis platform Kaiko reported that TRUMP trading volume surged 200% on the dinner announcement, with centralized exchange activity temporarily overtaking all other memecoins.

The initial announcement about the dinner on April 23 caused TRUMP to surge 53% from $9.40 to $14.37 within a few hours. The token’s upward momentum persisted until April 26, when it reached $16.03, its highest price since March 3.

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Gaming tokens have seemingly been on the sidelines since the 2021 crypto boom. In fact, data from SoSoValue shows that they were the worst-performing crypto basket over the last 12-month period, enduring a 62% drop in the period, compared to a 174% rise on PayFi tokens.

However, under the Trump administration’s crypto-friendly stance, it might be changing.

Gala Games—a blockchain-based gaming platform—says it became the first crypto gaming company to partner with the White House, bringing a Web3 game Easter Egg Hunt to the 2025 Easter Egg Roll. White House official X’s account also mentioned on the social media platform about the tie-up amid a plethora of other collaborations with tech giants.

The GALA token has risen roughly 18% since the announcement, GameFi tokens went up 13%, and the broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, rose 8%.

User engagement

The effort aimed to introduce blockchain to families without overwhelming them.

The game, hosted at easter.gala.games, offered a “free and simple” experience where players collected virtual eggs to win unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs) stored on GalaChain, Gala’s proprietary Layer 1 blockchain, the company said in an announcement shared with CoinDesk.

Players were able to log in, explore, and collect eggs without needing a crypto wallet experience, Gala Games said. Every NFT reward was stored on GalaChain, hinting at future use across Gala’s entertainment projects, including Gala Music and Gala Film.

The Web3 gaming firm told CoinDesk that over 300,000 games have been played since the event launched, with about 100,000 new accounts created. Roughly 17% of participants went on to explore Gala’s other projects, suggesting real user engagement beyond the Easter event.

The project, founded in 2019 by Zynga co-founder Eric Schiermeyer, has been laying the groundwork for broader adoption through partnerships with DreamWorks Animation, NBCUniversal, and collaborations with artists like Snoop Dogg. Earlier this month, Gala Film announced a partnership with LG Electronics to bring Web3 entertainment to TVs, and the company hinted it is working with a government agency on transparency efforts.

Industry reaction

The Easter game marks a real-world test for the project and the broader GameFi sector.

When asked about the lead-up to the event, Schiermeyer shared that the project has been focusing on the high-level tie-up. “We have a team dedicated to government outreach,” they said. “I also spent time at Mar-a-Lago and spoke with the President. But mainly we wanted to help make the event more fun, and I think that sentiment was well received.”

Industry reactions were mixed. Some praised the visibility, while others pointed out that more work is needed for the mass adoption of the GameFi industry.

Jack O’Holleran, CEO of SKALE Labs, told CoinDesk that GameFi has never stopped expanding, but its issue has been visibility instead. The technology, on top of that, has matured. “In the past, you needed to manage your own crypto wallets and pay high gas fees just to play,” he said. “Now, gas-free blockchains and seamless onboarding remove those barriers.”

“Functional values and utility that blockchain brings to gaming cannot be suppressed for much longer,” he added.

Still, a broader adoption of the GameFi sector will require further meaningful collaboration with mainstream gaming outlets. This could potentially open the “floodgates,” O’Holleran added, as player bases for the traditional gaming sector are far beyond the crypto sector’s user count. If so, the “floodgates will be open.”

Meanwhile, Mitja Goroshevsky, co-founder of Gosh, praised the visibility of Gala Games and the GameFi sector via the White House tie-up but warned that the industry must still solve its identity crisis.

“It’s caught between being about gaming and being about trading,” he said.

“Until blockchain games introduce fundamentally new experiences, government partnerships alone won’t drive mass adoption.”