World Liberty Financial publicly threatens lawsuit against Justin Sun.
Sun has accused the project of manipulating user funds.
The spat comes as the token trades 75% below its September peak.
World Liberty Financial is declaring war on its top investor — billionaire crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun.
On Sunday, the Trump family’s crypto venture blasted Sun in a fiery social media post, accusing him of “playing the victim” while making “baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct.”
“See you in court pal,” World Liberty Financial wrote on X. “We have the evidence. We have the truth.”
The public threat of a lawsuit marks a dramatic escalation in a feud between World Liberty Financial and one of US President Donald Trump’s biggest crypto allies. The venture’s WLFI token is trading 75% below its September peak as fresh questions swirl around its finances amid decentralised finance manoeuvres that market watchers say are highly risky.
What’s the feud about?
Sun has been a key backer of Trump-linked crypto projects.
The Tron blockchain founder has invested at least $75 million in the project’s WLFI token and about $18 million in the president’s TRUMP memecoin, which launched in January 2025.
The Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur has appeared alongside Trump family members at conferences and private events.
In November, 2024, Sun said he was “thrilled” to be World Liberty Financial’s largest investor and saluted the president’s pro-crypto policies.
“The US is becoming the blockchain hub and Bitcoin owes it to [President Trump],” Sun tweeted.
Now, however, the relationship has soured.
On Sunday, he fired off a barrage of tweets that accused the World Liberty Financial team of implanting backdoor controls over user assets, freezing investor funds without disclosure or due process, and treating the crypto community like a “personal ATM.”
“As the largest investor in this project, I demand that those responsible come forward by name, instead of hiding in the shadows,” he said.
The outburst comes after World Liberty Financial froze one of Sun’s wallets in September after the crypto mogul moved WLFI to the HTX crypto exchange, which he owns. The block meant that Sun couldn’t move more WLFI out of that wallet.
View post on X
Sun’s X spree came in response to a post that commented on Sun and the Trump project’s relationship, saying Sun had been “punished” for moving the funds.
Sun urged World Liberty Financial to “publicly disclose who controls the single guardian [external owned account] and the 3/5 multisig that governs the WLFI smart contract.”
A multisig is a type of crypto wallet that requires several private keys to authorise transactions. Whoever sits on those accounts has “the unilateral power to freeze any token holder’s assets,” Sun wrote.
“Let me be clear about what this structure means: community governance and voting are meaningless,” Sun said. “Every proposal, every vote, every claim of decentralised decision-making is theatre. Real power — the power to freeze, to move funds, to control the protocol — sits with one anonymous EOA and a 3-of-5 multisig that answers to no one.”
World Liberty Financial hit back, telling the Tron founder that they’d see him in court.
Neither World Liberty Financial nor Sun immediately replied to a request for comment from DL News.
Questions swirl
At stake is not only reputations, but the credibility of a Trump-linked crypto project that has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and the crypto community.
The WLFI token plunged 13% on Friday to about $0.079, an all-time low, after reports that the company used five billion tokens as collateral to borrow $75 million in stablecoins, including its own USD1, through the DeFi protocol Dolomite.
Dolomite was founded by Corey Caplan, an adviser to World Liberty Financial. The transaction left the lending pool exposed to sharp price swings and left some USD1 lenders unable to withdraw funds until World Liberty Financial unwinds its position, according to reports.
World Liberty Financial dismissed the criticism as “FUD” and said it was nowhere near liquidation, but it did not directly address the withdrawal bottleneck.
The project’s risk profile has also drawn fire. CORE3, a crypto ratings firm, assigned WLFI a D grade, placing it among the riskiest projects it tracks. The assessment cited insider-heavy token ownership and limited security monitoring.
To be sure, WLFI’s bearish price performance mirrors the broader altcoin market as the industry reels from a $2 trillion downturn. Prominent tokens like Solana and Dogecoin are also down over 70% from their peaks.
Political heat
The feud is escalating amid an incendiary political backdrop months ahead of the US midterm elections. Republicans are bracing for a sweeping defeat in November, a White House insider told Politico last week.
In March, Sun settled a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit from 2023, part of a broader crypto enforcement retreat under Trump. Rainberry, one of the companies associated with the Tron network agreed to pay a $10 million settlement.
But his ties to World Liberty Financial — and links to the Trump family — have become a key point of attack for Democratic lawmakers who accuse the administration of favouritism toward crypto allies.
The most outspoken of those is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who in March blasted the SEC for being a “lap dog for Trump’s billionaire buddies.”
“Any crypto legislation moving through Congress must stop the president’s crypto corruption,” Warren said.
The White House has repeatedly rejected allegations of wrongdoing.
Crypto market movers
Bitcoin is down 1.3% over the past 24 hours, trading at $70,677.
Ethereum is down 1.3% over the past 24 hours at $2,185.
What we’re reading
Bhutan Bitcoin ‘sell-off’ gathers pace, amid crypto mining halt claims — DL News
Falling oil prices a ‘powerful catalyst’ for crypto price growth, say experts — but there’s a catch — DL News
Bessent Presses Senate on Clarity Act, Labels Resistant Crypto Leaders ‘Nihilists’ — Unchained
Retail Is Quitting Crypto at the Worst Possible Time w/ Guy Wuollet — Milk Road
Bitcoin treasury Nakamoto aims for reverse stock split. Is it a good idea? — DL News
Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com
