{"id":624565,"date":"2026-04-22T23:53:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T23:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/624565\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T23:53:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T23:53:22","slug":"blockchain-billionaire-justin-sun-takes-trump-familys-crypto-firm-to-federal-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/624565\/","title":{"rendered":"Blockchain billionaire Justin Sun takes Trump family\u2019s crypto firm to federal court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun has sued World Liberty Financial, the digital currency venture co-founded by US President Donald Trump and his sons.<\/p>\n

Mr Sun alleged in the lawsuit that World Liberty secretly installed tools to prevent the sale of his tokens after they became tradable in September 2025.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California, also alleges that World Liberty threatened to “burn” \u2014 or permanently delete \u2014 his holdings, even while they were in Mr Sun’s digital wallet.<\/p>\n

The Hong Kong-based founder of the Tron cryptocurrency bought $US45 million ($63 million) of WLFI tokens, which amounted to three billion tokens.<\/p>\n

He was later awarded an additional one billion tokens after being named an advisor to World Liberty, the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n

His portfolio of four billion WLFI tokens is worth roughly $US320 million, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest WLFI price.<\/p>\n

\"two<\/p>\n

Zach Witkoff, left, and Eric Trump are co-founders of World Liberty Financial. (Reuters: Eduardo Munoz)<\/p>\n

Zach Witkoff, World Liberty Financial’s chief executive and a co-founder, said in a post on X on Wednesday that Mr Sun’s legal claims “are entirely meritless, and World Liberty looks forward to getting the case thrown out promptly”.<\/p>\n

“He engaged in misconduct that required World Liberty to take action to protect itself and its users,” added Mr Witkoff, who is the son of Steve Witkoff, US Special Envoy for Peace Missions.<\/p>\n

Eric Trump, the president’s son and a World Liberty co-founder, also posted on X on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“The only thing more ridiculous than this lawsuit is spending $6 million on a banana duct-taped to a wall,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Sun purchased a piece of art called “Comedian” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which was a banana taped to a wall. He ate the banana after he purchased it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Justin Sun ate the banana artwork immediately after he purchased it. (AFP: Peter Parks)<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial \u200bdeclined to comment on the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Souring relationship<\/p>\n

World Liberty is the most prominent of several lucrative crypto businesses co-founded or controlled by the Trump family, which has already generated more than $US1 billion in revenue, according to a Reuters analysis.<\/p>\n

Trump accused of profiting from presidency<\/a><\/p>\n

Donald Trump’s wealth has skyrocketed since his return to the White House nine months ago, leading to accusations that he is profiting from the presidency.<\/p>\n

World Liberty’s bylaws state that 75 per cent of the revenue from WLFI token sales is routed to the Trumps.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit caps a dramatic deterioration of relations between Mr Sun and World Liberty.<\/p>\n

In September, Mr Sun claimed the company had frozen his token holdings, and earlier this month, he alleged in a post on the social media platform X that World Liberty had secretly embedded what he described as a “backdoor blacklisting function” in the blockchain-based contracts used for the tokens.<\/p>\n

That gave World Liberty “unilateral power” to “freeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate the property rights” of token holders without cause or recourse, he wrote on X.<\/p>\n

World Liberty at that time responded to Mr Sun’s allegations with a post on X that said: “We have the contracts. We have the \u2060evidence. We have the truth. See you in court, pal.”<\/p>\n

The lawsuit said Mr Sun “has long been [and remains] an ardent supporter of President Trump and the Trump family.”<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun has sued World Liberty Financial, the digital currency venture co-founded by US President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,2009,99,13996,13999,2490,22338,128644,2462,174451,302516,128639,13324],"class_list":["post-624565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bitcoin","tag-business","tag-crypto","tag-crypto-currency","tag-donald-trump","tag-eric-trump","tag-justin-sun","tag-lawsuit","tag-tokens","tag-witkoff","tag-world-liberty-financial","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}