There's a guy named Morten Christensen who has figured out a pretty clever way to get invited to fancy dinners with President Donald Trump. He buys the Official Trump memecoin (TRUMP) — but he also shorts the same amount, so his net exposure is zero. It's a market-neutral strategy that costs him nothing in risk but gets him a seat at the table. Literally.

Last year, Christensen attended a VIP dinner at Trump's private golf club near Washington, D.C., where the president addressed the guests. Fast forward almost 14 months, and the $1.4 billion fortune Trump made on his cryptocurrency projects is what everyone's talking about. Christensen, founder of Airdrop Alert and a Dutch native, finds the whole thing "quite absurd."

"In Europe, something like this would never happen," he said in an interview. He called it "mind-blowing" that Trump monetizes not just crypto but also merch, watches, and trading cards.

The TRUMP memecoin was launched just before Trump's presidential inauguration in January 2025. It hit a market capitalization of nearly $15 billion shortly after launch, then collapsed by 98% to $368 million at the time of writing. On-chain analysis shows that nearly one million investors who bought the coin collectively lost $3.81 billion. Meanwhile, Trump collected more than $635 million in royalties from the project.

Christensen never had much faith in the memecoin. He sold all his TRUMP in the first week and only uses his market-neutral strategy to get invited to events. "Memecoins almost never last," he said. "It's attention economy, and if you're not out in first week or two weeks, then shame on yourself." Would he do it again? "Absolutely."

Then there's World Liberty Financial (WLFI). Christensen revealed that 80% of his WLFI tokens are locked, but he managed to sell 20% of the unlocked portion. "I hold a significant amount on paper, but in my mind, it's kind of worth zero because it's a two-year lock," he said. "In two years, a project can die easily." Trump earned over $520 million from the sale of WLFI tokens and over $65 million from equity sales in WLFI's holding company, WLF Holdco.

The disclosures have sparked massive backlash and conflict-of-interest concerns. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has called for ethical safeguards in cryptocurrency legislation to block any opportunities for Trump to profit. Dylan Dewdney, co-founder and CEO of agentic finance platform Kuvi.ai, said the optics are poor and that the "long-term damage will be to crypto's credibility" rather than to any one politician. "This is, unfortunately, a case of crypto making its own bed and now having to lie in it," he said.

Trump has defended his cryptocurrency income, asserting there was nothing "illegal" or "wrong" about it. A White House spokesperson said that all of the President's assets are held in "fully discretionary accounts" managed by "independent third-party financial institutions," rejecting any allegations of conflicts of interest.

So, is this a story about a president monetizing his office, or about a trader who found a way to dine with power while betting against the very thing that got him there? Maybe it's both. Either way, it's a reminder that in the world of memecoins and politics, the line between genius and absurdity can be razor-thin.