In the lawsuit, Sun alleged that World Liberty illegally froze its holdings in tokens issued by the company.
Published April 22, 2026
Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun has sued World Liberty Financial, a digital currency venture co-founded by US President Donald Trump and his sons, alleging that World Liberty illegally froze his holdings in tokens issued by the company.
Sun alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in California that World Liberty secretly installed tools to prevent the sale of its tokens after they became tradable in September 2025. The complaint also alleges that World Liberty threatened to “burn” or permanently delete Sun’s holdings, even though the tokens were in his digital wallet.
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According to the complaint, Mr. Sun, the founder of the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency Tron, purchased $45 million (approximately 3 billion) of WLFI tokens and later acquired an additional 1 billion tokens after being appointed as an advisor to World Liberty.
Sun’s portfolio of 4 billion WLFI tokens is worth about $320 million, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest WLFI prices.
World Liberty Financial declined to comment on the lawsuit. A company spokesperson told Reuters earlier this week that Sun “is not an advisor to World Liberty Financial and has never held a business role at the company.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
World Liberty is the most prominent of several lucrative cryptocurrency businesses co-founded or controlled by the Trump family, which has already earned more than $1 billion from it, according to a Reuters analysis. World Liberty’s terms stipulate that 75% of the proceeds from the sale of WLFI tokens will go to the Trump family.
World Liberty has come under intense scrutiny from some investors, who have complained for months about the company’s lack of transparency, centralized governance structure and lack of responsiveness to community complaints.
In the lawsuit, Sun described himself as “one of World Liberty’s anchor investors.”
World Liberty’s structure means that the WLFI tokens Sun purchased in 2024 are not equivalent to stock in a standard company. The tokens have no ownership interest in the company, and holders are not entitled to dividends, but they do get a limited say in the company’s governance.
deteriorated relationship
The lawsuit ends a dramatic deterioration in Sun’s relationship with World Liberty.
Sun claimed in September that the company had frozen his token holdings, and earlier this month in a post on social media platform
This gave World Liberty “unilateral authority” to “freeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate property rights” of token holders without cause or seeker, Sun wrote about X.
At the time, World Liberty responded to Sun’s claims with a post on X that read, “We have the contract. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court.”
According to the complaint, Sun “was (and remains) an avid supporter of President Trump and the Trump family for many years.”
frozen
The complaint alleges that World Liberty representatives “repeatedly contacted and pressured” Sun to invest additional capital in the business between April and July 2025. These include a commitment to acquire $200 million in another World Liberty stablecoin token and a request to acquire a stake in the company.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Sun said he had “made a good faith effort” to resolve his complaint against World Liberty, adding that World Liberty’s team “rejected my request to unfreeze my tokens and restore my rights as a token holder.”
Under the measures the company proposed last week, early investors, who collectively held 17 billion tokens, would be unable to trade any of their tokens until 2030, a year after the president is scheduled to leave office.
Sun said he was “strongly opposed” to the new governance proposal, but could not vote on it because World Liberty had frozen early investor tokens.
Sun also has a large investment in President Trump’s so-called meme coin.
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has launched a series of crypto-friendly policies.
In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled a 2023 lawsuit against Sun for $10 million. The lawsuit alleges fraud by selling unregistered virtual currency securities and concealing payments to celebrities to promote the products. Mr Sun denied any wrongdoing.
