Cryptocurrency billionaire Justin Sun filed a lawsuit Tuesday in California federal court against World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture co-founded by President Donald Trump and his sons, alleging the company illegally blocked him from selling digital tokens worth up to $1 billion.
Sun's complaint accuses World Liberty Financial of secretly altering the contractual rules governing when token holders could sell their holdings. According to the lawsuit, the company gave itself "blacklisting power" over token transfers without any governance vote or announcement to holders. "World Liberty simply took the power for itself," the complaint alleged.
The lawsuit also claims executives pressured Sun to invest "hundreds of millions of dollars" in USD1, the company's stablecoin. When Sun declined, he alleges the company froze his tokens, stripped his voting rights, and threatened to permanently destroy his holdings by "burning" them.
World Liberty Financial pushed back immediately. Co-founder and CEO Zach Witkoff called the allegations "entirely meritless" in a social media post Wednesday, saying Sun had engaged in misconduct that required the company to act. "World Liberty will continue to take all necessary steps to protect its community," Witkoff wrote.
Eric Trump, another co-founder, was more pointed. "The only thing more ridiculous than this lawsuit is spending $6 million on a banana duct-taped to a wall," he wrote, a reference to Sun's 2024 purchase of an art piece called "Comedian."
Sun, best known as the founder of the Tron blockchain, had previously been one of the most prominent public supporters of Trump-linked crypto projects. He disclosed last year that he was the largest holder of the $TRUMP token, a separate Trump-backed digital asset. In his own social media post explaining the lawsuit, Sun said he remains a supporter of the president and blamed "certain individuals" within World Liberty for the alleged misconduct.
"I do not believe President Trump would condone these actions if he knew about them," Sun wrote.
The complaint also names co-founder Chase Herro, accusing him and other executives of seeking to "leverage the Trump brand" to drive illegal profits. Sun says he was one of the company's anchor investors before the relationship collapsed.
The case puts a significant investor relationship at the center of a legal dispute that touches the Trump family's growing presence in the cryptocurrency industry.
