Justin Sun Bashes Trump Family’s World Liberty, Claims Investors Used as ‘Personal ATM’

A months-simmering spat between the Trump family’s crypto company and one of its principal backers erupted into public view over the weekend, with threats of corruption and legal action flying in both directions.

Amid the emerging feud, which coincided with a number of other developments for the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial, the company’s native WLFI token has plummeted to its lowest-ever value over the weekend. The token is currently trading at just shy of $0.08, down 20% in the last week—and over 76% from its price shortly after becoming tradable last fall. It dipped as low as $0.077 on Saturday.

Shortly after President Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, Justin Sun, the controversial crypto entrepreneur and founder of the Tron blockchain, bought tens of millions of dollars worth of WLFI from World Liberty. The purchases made Sun the single largest holder of the token, which permits holders to vote on certain proposals related to World Liberty’s governance.

In September, World Liberty blacklisted Sun’s wallet and froze his tokens, after the China-born crypto founder appeared to begin moving millions of dollars’ worth of his WLFI stash. Sun insisted at the time that he hadn’t moved the tokens with the intent to sell them—an action that could have been forbidden by the terms of his initial investment.

But while Sun attempted to strike a conciliatory tone at the time, chalking the fracas up to a big misunderstanding, that tone changed significantly over the weekend.

On Sunday, Sun lashed out at World Liberty, claiming on X that the company embedded a secret backdoor in the smart contract to deploy WLFI that allows it to freeze any holder’s tokens “without notice, without cause, and without recourse.” Such capabilities are antithetical to the principle of decentralization underpinning the crypto ecosystem, he said.

But Sun didn’t stop there. He went on to attack World Liberty in extremely pointed terms, asserting that the Trump family’s company “treat[s] the crypto community as a personal ATM.” He went on to label World Liberty’s leaders—among them, several members of the Trump family—as “bad actors.”

The only remedy for the situation, Sun said, would be if World Liberty unlocked all tokens it had previously frozen—and discloses who controls and operates the company’s smart contracts.

World Liberty soon after clapped back at the Tron founder, refusing to engage with his demands and labeling him a wrongdoer.

“Justin’s favorite move is playing the victim while making baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct,” the company said in a Sunday statement. “See you in court pal.”

Representatives for Sun did not immediately respond to Decrypt‘s requests for comment. A World Liberty Financial spokesperson referred Decrypt to its X posts when reached for contact.

The public nature of the dispute is particularly notable given the interconnectedness of Sun’s political fortunes and the Trump administration.

After Sun spent tens of millions of dollars on WLFI tokens—and purchased several million dollars’ more worth of President Donald Trump’s official meme coin—the Trump SEC opted to settle a yearslong fraud case against the entrepreneur in March. The SEC’s handling of the Sun case so disgruntled the agency’s head of enforcement that she soon after resigned, according to a Reuters report.

But the civil war brewing between World Liberty and one of its principal investors is unlikely to make much of a difference on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have for months used Sun as a poster example of what they have labeled “Trump’s crypto corruption.”

Should Democrats retake one or both chambers of Congress in November—a likelihood with 90% odds, according to Polymarket—World Liberty and Sun are poised to come under much greater scrutiny in Washington.