Justin Sun pays $30M to buy his way into Trump’s good books

Justin Sun is betting that currying favor with—and throwing cash at—Donald Trump might one day allow him to return to U.S. shores without fear of being immediately arrested.

On November 25, Sun tweeted, “We are thrilled to invest $30 million in World Liberty Financial as its largest investor. The U.S. is becoming the blockchain hub, and Bitcoin owes it to @realDonaldTrump!” The ‘we’ in this context apparently refers to Tron, the blockchain founded by Sun, as Sun’s tweet included a graphic showing both the WLFI and Tron logos.

World Liberty Financial (WLF) is the Trump-affiliated decentralized finance project that held an initial coin offering (ICO) of its WLFI’ governance token’ in October. The ICO was a major bust, with only 20% of the roughly 100,000 individuals who registered in advance for the sale actually buying any WLFI. This prompted WLF to announce on October 30 that it was reducing its original target sale of $300 million worth of the tokens (at $0.015 apiece) to just $30 million “before terminating sale.”

Sun apparently sensed an opportunity to grab some mainstream media coverage and simultaneously worm his way into Trump’s good books by buying up two billion WLFI tokens. The $30 million was transferred via the HTX (formerly Huobi) exchange, one of the many heads of Sun’s crypto Hydra.

However, since WLF had sold $21.2 million worth of WLFI by the time Sun opened his digital wallet, the $30 million target has been breached (and then some) without any explanation from WLF as to why it was willing to move these financial goal posts (again).

That is beyond the fact that the Trump-controlled DT Marks DEFI LLC is entitled to 75% of any WLF revenue over and above that $30 million threshold. In other words, Sun’s big buy just put ~$15 million into Trump’s pocket.

WLF issued a statement hyping “the momentum” it’s experiencing, as evidenced by “this sizable purchase of WLF tokens” following “several significant purchases in recent weeks.” WLF claimed to be “confident in our future success as we build a platform that promotes freer and fairer finance. We expect more such developments to happen in the coming weeks and months.”

And just as quo follows quid, on November 26, WLF tweeted the “Exciting Announcement!” that Sun was being welcomed as a WLF “advisor.” The announcement claimed Sun’s “insights and experience will be instrumental as we continue to innovate and grow.” The tweet was accompanied by one of those dollar-store-boy-band photos of the preternaturally fresh-faced Sun.

WLF’s announcement was ‘welcomed’ by numerous reply tweets, some claiming that “having a known crypto scammer isn’t the flex you think it is,” and others expressing the view that “this is not heading in a good direction.” 

What’s my motivation here?

Sun’s interest in currying Trump’s favor would appear obvious to anyone familiar with his history. First, there’s the fact that Sun was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2023 for offering unregistered securities (Tron’s native token TRX) to American consumers.

Second, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY)—with help from the FBI—has reportedly been preparing possible charges against Sun, including wire fraud, conspiracy or intent to commit wire fraud, swindling, money laundering, spending the spoils of a criminal enterprise, failure to register a security and lying about it, aiding and abetting a crime, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

For years, Sun embraced his status as ‘Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization,’ although this status was revoked in 2023 following an election that brought a different party to power in Grenada.

More recently, Sun was ‘appointed’ the new prime minister of Liberland, a self-proclaimed ‘micronation’ occupying seven square kilometers of uninhabited land straddling the borders of Serbia and Croatia. Established based on using cryptocurrency as the foundation of its economy, Liberland has no citizens, merchants, or consumers—ergo, no economy. In other words, Liberland is tailor-made for ‘crypto,’ which can’t actually be used for any practical purpose.

It’s unclear whether Sun believes his Liberland appointment offers at least the perception of diplomatic immunity, but perhaps that’s no longer necessary now that he’s made his WLFI connections.

Sun hasn’t set foot on U.S. soil since the COVID-19 pandemic and doesn’t appear likely to do so anytime soon. That is, unless Trump takes notice of Sun’s WLF largesse and, combined with administrative turnover at both the SEC and the SDNY, helps alleviate Sun’s stateside legal difficulties.

Justin’s mom says he’s a catch

Sun appears to be on something of a high-spending PR blitz, having recently paid $6.2 million at auction for a piece of ‘art’ named Comedian that consists of a banana duct-taped to a wall. Sun claimed, “In the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience.” Uh-huh.

This PR blitz could be intended as a counter to the spate of negative Sun stories over the past year (and 2023 wasn’t exactly one for the scrapbook). This includes the decision in February by USDC-issuer Circle to pull its stablecoin from Tron due to questions regarding the “suitability” of the network. That decision followed reports of Islamic terror groups’ use of the Tether (USDT) stablecoin, particularly USDT issued on Tron.

In August, there was an alarmed response to the announcement that the Sun-linked Hong Kong-based BiT Global was now a custodial partner of wBTC, the ‘wrapped’ version of the BTC token used in DeFi applications on Ethereum and other blockchains.

Sun’s ties to wBTC appear to have prompted the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) exchange to delist wBTC and launch its own tokenized version of BTC (cbBTC) in September. This was followed in October by the Kraken exchange launching kBTC, reflecting both exchanges’ eagerness to offer their own proprietary BTC-based tokens, as well as the general unease that tends to set in following news of Sun’s involvement in a project.

For a long time, Tron was the primary destination for the newly minted USDT, eclipsing the original leader, Ethereum, by a wide margin. On August 6, there was nearly $61 billion in USDT on Tron compared to $52 billion on Ethereum. That disparity has now flipped back, with USDT on Ethereum nearing $70 billion—more than half the nearly $133 billion issued in total and $8 billion more than currently exists on Tron.

This shift appears to have started around the time of the wBTC custodial announcement but has accelerated rapidly in recent weeks. There are lots of possibilities for why this shift may have occurred—not all of them flattering—but the timing is interesting nonetheless.

It may not have helped that, around the same time, the Sun-linked ‘algorithmic stablecoin’ USDD appears to have removed around 12,000 BTC tokens from its reserves without any vote by the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that is supposed to participate in decisions of this magnitude.

Worse, Sun’s own TRX token replaced the removed BTC, the true value of which is decidedly in the eye of the beHODLer, and Sun’s explanations for the unapproved BTC-for-TRX switcheroo didn’t assuage everyone’s concerns.

Adding additional unease to this mix, the HTX exchange redeemed around $500 million worth of wBTC on November 24, the single largest redemption in over a year and the sixth-largest wBTC redemption ever.

But, as reported by Protos, wBTC is thinly traded on HTX, and the ‘proof-of-reserves’ self-audits that HTX publishes didn’t list any wBTC among its assets. The address that redeemed the 5,182 wBTC also wasn’t listed on HTX’s reserves, prompting questions about what other secrets HTX might have stashed away.

Indecent proposal?

Getting back to WLF, the newly flush entity announced a proposal on November 26 to “deploy a World Liberty Financial Aave v3 instance for the World Liberty Financial Protocol. This instance will be managed through external risk managers and will be built on the existing Aave v3 infrastructure and launch on Ethereum mainnet.”

This proposal aims to “introduce a new class of users to over-collateralized borrowing and lending” by providing liquidity for several tokens, including USDC, USDT, ETH, and wBTC.

As a WLF ‘advisor’ and the single largest holder—apart from Trump, natch—of WLF’s ‘governance’ token, Sun will have a major say in whether this proposal flies. And since Sun probably doesn’t want to annoy his new master before any clemency is granted, you can probably chalk this proposal up as ‘a done deal.’

However, since the WLF principals’ previous DeFi project was hacked for nearly $2 million this summer, and Sun-affiliated projects appear to be catnip for hackers, it might be time to start the exploit countdown. But look on the bright side: this time, it could be Sun’s money that goes astray.

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