Trump family-affiliated crypto firm gets dragged to court by Tronix billionaire

Crypto billionaire Justin Sun has filed a lawsuit against World Liberty Financial, a digital asset firm co-founded by Donald Trump and his sons, alleging the company unlawfully froze his cryptocurrency holdings.

The complaint, lodged in a federal court in California, claims World Liberty secretly implemented technical measures to block Sun from selling his tokens after they became tradable in September 2025. It also alleges the company threatened to “burn” — permanently delete — the assets, even though they remained in Sun’s personal digital wallet, according to a Reuters report.

Sun, the Hong Kong-based founder of the TRON network, which trades the Tronix cryptocurrency, said he initially purchased $45 million worth of WLFI tokens — approximately 3 billion units — and later received an additional 1 billion tokens after being named an adviser to the project. According to Reuters calculations based on current prices, his total holdings of 4 billion tokens are valued at roughly $320 million.

Earlier this week, a company spokesperson told Reuters that Sun “is not an advisor at World Liberty Financial, and he has never held an operational role in the company.”

The dispute comes as World Liberty — one of several crypto ventures linked to the Trump family — faces mounting scrutiny from investors. Critics have raised concerns over what they describe as limited transparency, a highly centralised governance structure, and a lack of responsiveness to community complaints.

Relations between Sun and the company have deteriorated sharply in recent months. In September, Sun publicly claimed his token holdings had been frozen. Earlier this month, he escalated the dispute, alleging on social media platform X that World Liberty had embedded a “backdoor blacklisting function” into its blockchain contracts.

According to Sun, this mechanism granted the company “unilateral power” to “freeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate the property rights” of token holders without due process. 

Zach Witkoff, World Liberty Financial's CEO and a co-founder, who is also the son of US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, said in a post on X that Sun's legal claims "are entirely meritless, and World ​Liberty looks forward to getting the case thrown out promptly."

The firm further pushed back against Sun's claims in a post on X, stating: “We have the contracts. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court pal.”

By Nazrin Sadigova