Leif's Website

On 23 April, Donald Trump announced that the top 220 holders of his cryptocurrency $TRUMP would be invited to a private dinner with the president, described as 'one of the most exclusive events in the world'. How exclusive is the dinner really?

Here’s the trade:

1. Buy $TRUMP, sell future¹
2. Attend gala dinner
3. Sell $TRUMP, buy future

How much does this trade cost? Typically, when an instrument pays a dividend — or in this case, a gala dinner — anyone providing to the trade would charge a price high enough to offset the dividend they would have to pay the buyer. But in this case, the provider doesn't pay the dividend! The dividend is paid by the gala dinner hosts gratis. The provider can provide at any price, and so the trade should be free.

I can think of some limitations to this trade. Eventually all available $TRUMP will be bought up, and before then, the amount of $TRUMP required for this trade will become so large that trading fees make it unfeasible, or the risk of keeping such a large position on Binance will become too risky. However, as the leaderboard stands now, an average holding of only 50,000 USD would place you comfortably in the top 220 holders. The competition lasts 20 days from 23 April to 12 May, so you would need 1,000,000 USD-days to go to the dinner. Surely people out there can afford a $1M-day zero-exposure position?