Hardly anyone has been a bigger supporter of President Trump’s cryptocurrency firm than Justin Sun, the Chinese-born crypto billionaire.
Mr. Sun bought $75 million of the firm’s signature cryptocurrency. He joined Eric Trump onstage at a crypto event in Dubai, and he embraced the U.S. crypto market after the Securities and Exchange Commission paused a fraud lawsuit against him.
But this week that relationship appeared to be fraying.
Late Thursday, Mr. Sun hit out at the company, World Liberty Financial, posting on X that his stash of coins had been “unreasonably frozen” after analyst speculation that Mr. Sun was moving to sell them.
“Unlock my tokens, and let’s move forward together,” Mr. Sun wrote.
The episode added to a swirl of concerns over World Liberty. The company has profited from the crypto industry at the same time that the Trump administration rewrites crypto regulations, a blatant conflict of interest. And even as the company has preached financial freedom, it has engaged in practices that have alarmed some crypto entrepreneurs.
The dust-up with Mr. Sun came at the end of a high-stakes week for World Liberty. On Monday, the firm allowed thousands of early investors to begin selling its cryptocurrency, $WLFI, on the open market, with disappointing results as the price crashed about 50 percent.
Amid the market turmoil, analysts pointed to evidence on the public ledger of crypto transactions that Mr. Sun was moving some of his coins. In an apparent response, Mr. Sun wrote on X that the transfers were simply “tests” and that “no buying or selling was involved, so it could not possibly have any impact on the market.”
It is not clear who made the decision to freeze Mr. Sun’s account. In the crypto world, traders are generally allowed to sell their coins, as long as they are not subject to so-called lockups sometimes imposed on early investors. A freeze is a rare step, usually taken in response to a law enforcement request.
Mr. Sun and World Liberty did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But by Friday morning, Mr. Sun’s tone had shifted. He wrote on X that he would buy another $10 million of $WLFI, as well as $10 million in shares of a publicly traded company that the founders of World Liberty helped set up.
World Liberty is one element of a vast array of crypto investments by the Trumps.
Just days before the inauguration, Mr. Trump began selling a so-called memecoin that surged in value before plummeting. His sons are also involved in a Bitcoin venture, American Bitcoin.
The public trading of the $WLFI coin, now worth about $0.18 per coin, was meant to be a marquee moment for the Trumps. The leaders of World Liberty had teased it for weeks, prompting speculation on social media that the price could surge to astonishing heights.
But the dispute with Mr. Sun has cast a shadow.
In his post on X, Mr. Sun said that the freezing of his coins undermined “sacred and inviolable” principles of the crypto world, violating the “legitimate rights of investors.”
David Yaffe-Bellany writes about the crypto industry from New York. He can be reached at [email protected].
The post Billionaire Crypto Investor Hits Out at Trump Family’s Firm appeared first on New York Times.
