{"id":545092,"date":"2026-04-22T18:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T18:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/545092\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T18:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T18:30:08","slug":"billionaire-sues-digital-currency-venture-co-founded-by-trump-and-sons-for-illegal-account-freezing-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/545092\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire sues digital currency venture co-founded by Trump and sons for illegal account freezing | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billionaire crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Tuesday sued World Liberty Financial, the digital currency venture co-founded by Donald Trump<\/a> and his sons, alleging that World Liberty illegally froze his holdings of tokens issued by the company.<\/p>\n

Sun, the largest investor in World Liberty, alleged in the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California<\/a>, that the company secretly installed tools to prevent the sale of his tokens after they became tradeable in September 2025. The lawsuit also alleges that World Liberty threatened to \u201cburn\u201d \u2013 or permanently delete \u2013 his holdings, even while they were in Sun\u2019s digital wallet.<\/p>\n

Sun, the Hong Kong-based founder of the Tron cryptocurrency, bought $45m of WLFI tokens \u2013 some 3bn \u2013 and was later awarded a further 1bn tokens after being named as an adviser to World Liberty, the lawsuit said. In the lawsuit, Sun described himself as \u201cone of World Liberty\u2019s anchor investors\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sun\u2019s portfolio of 4bn WLFI tokens is worth roughly $320m, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest WLFI price.<\/p>\n

World Liberty Financial declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesperson for the company said earlier this week that Sun \u201cis not an advisor at World Liberty Financial, and he has never held an operational role in the company\u201d.<\/p>\n

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

World Liberty is the most prominent of several lucrative crypto businesses co-founded or controlled by the Trump family, which has already made more than $1bn from World Liberty, according to a Reuters analysis. World Liberty\u2019s bylaws state that 75% of the revenue from WLFI token sales is routed to the Trumps. World Liberty is under increasing scrutiny from some of its investors, who have complained for months about what they describe as the company\u2019s lack of transparency, centralized governance structure and failure to respond to community complaints, Reuters reported this month.<\/p>\n

World Liberty\u2019s structure means that the WLFI tokens Sun bought in 2024 are not equivalent to standard company shares. The tokens do not carry ownership in the company and holders are not entitled to dividends, although they do gain a limited say in the company\u2019s governance.<\/p>\n

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

In September, Sun claimed that the company had frozen his token holdings, and earlier this month alleged in a post on social media platform X that World Liberty had secretly embedded what he described as a \u201cbackdoor blacklisting function\u201d in the blockchain-based contracts used for the tokens.<\/p>\n

That gave World Liberty \u201cunilateral power\u201d to \u201cfreeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate the property rights\u201d of token holders without cause or recourse, Sun wrote on X.<\/p>\n

World Liberty at that time responded to Sun\u2019s allegations with a post on X that said: \u201cWe have the contracts. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court pal.\u201d The lawsuit said Sun \u201chas long been (and remains) an ardent supporter of President Trump and the Trump family\u201d.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit alleges that World Liberty representatives \u201crepeatedly contacted and pressured\u201d Sun to invest additional capital in the venture between April and July 2025, including requests to commit to acquiring $200m in a separate World Liberty stablecoin token and to acquire an equity stake in the company.<\/p>\n

Sun said in a post on X on Wednesday that he had \u201ctried in good faith\u201d to resolve his complaints with World Liberty, adding that its team \u201crefused my requests to unfreeze my tokens and restore my rights as a token holder\u201d.<\/p>\n

A measure proposed by the company last week would restrict early investors holding a combined 17bn tokens from being able to trade all of their tokens until 2030, a year after the president is scheduled to leave office.<\/p>\n

Sun said he \u201cstrongly opposes\u201d the new governance proposal but claimed he could not vote on it as World Liberty had frozen his early investor tokens.<\/p>\n

Sun has also invested heavily in Trump\u2019s so-called meme coin.<\/p>\n

Trump has launched a slate of crypto-friendly policies since returning to the White House in January 2025.<\/p>\n

In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a 2023 lawsuit against Sun for $10m. The lawsuit had alleged fraud, selling unregistered crypto securities and hiding payments to celebrities to promote his products. Sun made no admission of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Billionaire crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Tuesday sued World Liberty Financial, the digital currency venture co-founded by Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-545092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}