Billionaire slams Trump-linked company after losing $11M

The Trump family-backed project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) has positioned itself as a way to empower individuals through transparent, accessible, democratic and secure financial solutions.  

When Justin Sun, billionaire and founder of the Tron blockchain, committed $30 million to WLFI token in late 2024, he hailed President Donald Trump as the reason the United States was becoming a blockchain capital.

But things have changed and soured in the past two years. Now, Sun is openly calling out the company and the token project.

Related: Trump family’s WLFI token briefly overtakes XRP derivatives volume before 28% crash

After his initial investment in WLFI, Sun continued building his stake, eventually reaching more than $75 million in WLFI tokens. He also separately pledged $100 million to the TRUMP memecoin.

That conviction curdled in 2025. After Sun's wallet moved approximately $9 million in WLFI tokens, World Liberty Financial quietly blacklisted the address, freezing his entire position and stripping him of any ability to sell. 

His 544.7 million tokens, currently valued at roughly $43.73 million as per Arkham, have sat locked ever since. On Apr. 10, he watched more than $11 million in paper value evaporate as the token slid.

Related: Justin Sun asks to unlock his WLFI tokens in desperate plea

What happened to WLFI?

It all started last week when CoinDesk reported that WLFI had pledged 5 billion of its own tokens on the Dolomite lending platform to borrow $75 million in stablecoin.

This effectively drained the protocol's USD1 pool and prevented other depositors from accessing their funds.

More than $40 million of those borrowed funds were subsequently sent to Coinbase Prime.

Adding to investor unease, it also emerged that the team had quietly shelved a proposal to unlock $427 million worth of tokens. Early backers had anticipated this move, and its sudden cancellation resulted in a sharp selloff.

World Liberty Financial was not silent. 

In a thread on X, the project pushed back against what it called "FUD," which stands for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The company called the criticism of its lending strategy a misreading of how the arrangement works. 

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Billionaire points finger at 'trap door' 

In a post on X on Apr. 12, Sun alleged that World Liberty Financial had embedded an undisclosed blacklisting function directly into the WLFI smart contract. This grants the project's leadership unilateral power to freeze any token holder's assets without notice, cause, or recourse. 

Sun says this was never disclosed to him or to any investor at the time capital was committed. He described the governance votes used to retroactively justify WLFI's actions as non-transparent, with key information withheld and outcomes that appeared predetermined.

"This is a trap door marketed as an open door."

Sun denounced what he called "ongoing token scandals by the bad actors at WLFI," describing himself as the "first and largest victim" of the project's decision to blacklist his wallet in 2025. 

He called the move a violation of basic investor rights and core principles of blockchain fairness.

He went further, accusing the WLFI team of a pattern of misconduct in which they charge illegitimate fees, secretly embed backdoor controls over users' assets, freeze funds without disclosure or due process, and treat the broader crypto community as a source of personal profit. 

None of these actions, he argued, had ever been sanctioned through a legitimate governance process.

Sun also challenged the validity of the governance votes WLFI has cited to justify its decisions, alleging that key information was withheld from voters, that meaningful participation was deliberately restricted, and that the results had been predetermined.

"These votes do not represent the will of the community — they represent the will of those who designed them."

He emphasized that neither he nor other investors who believed in the project's original promises had any part in these decisions, and said he opposed all of them in the strongest possible terms. He closed with a direct demand to unlock the frozen tokens, restore transparency, and return to building with integrity. 

TheStreet Roundtable reached out to Sun and World Liberty Financial for comments and had not received a response by the time of publication.

Related: Eric Trump joins World Liberty Financial treasury company before WLFI token launch