TRON founder Justin Sun has fallen out with the team behind the U.S. President’s crypto project World Liberty. Worst of all, the clash happened on the eve of the entrepreneur’s platform IPO.
Here’s what Sun did to upset Donald Trump — and why the crypto community believes the TRON founder has finally met long-awaited payback.
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What happened
On September 1, 2025, WLFI, the cryptocurrency of the Trump family’s World Liberty project, appeared on exchanges. The start of trading gave investors the opportunity to transact with the coin.
Unfortunately for the crypto community, Trump’s promising cryptocurrency WLFI began to fall rapidly. On the trading day, the price briefly broke through $0.30, after which a crash followed. The low was recorded on the evening of September 4 at $0.16. After that, the coin recovered slightly.
At the time of writing, Trump’s cryptocurrency is trading at $0.18, which is 40% below the high.
WLFI chart. Source: CoinGecko
Members of the crypto community asked why WLFI is dropping so quickly if the project team organized a token burn to support the price.
The situation escalated as the coin fell to its low on the evening of September 4. At that moment, Justin Sun — one of the largest WLFI investors — came under fire.
The World Liberty team froze the businessman’s tokens. The reason: suspicions of market manipulation. Allegedly, Sun took advantage of the launch of Trump’s cryptocurrency trading to profit from his WLFI investment.
Many analysts tracked the businessman’s movement of assets. The Bubblemaps team was among the first to draw attention to the transfers. According to them, Sun began transferring WLFI to centralized exchanges to stage a sell-off of the cryptocurrency. His actions could have been the main reason for the World Liberty token’s price collapse.
On the morning of September 5, 2025, Sun published a post on X in which he claimed he had nothing to do with the sell-off. In his words, he believes in World Liberty’s future. Sun called the funds freeze unfair and demanded that the project team restore his access to the assets.
Not everyone in the crypto community believed the businessman’s sincerity. Many noticed that Sun had been caught manipulating the market more than once. In the opinion of community members, the businessman finally got his long-awaited comeuppance.
Here’s how analyst Quinten Francois sees the situation:
- At launch, there were more $WLFI tokens in circulation than promised (6.8% instead of 5%); part of the supply wasn’t locked in smart contracts with a vesting schedule.
- Justin Sun had 3% of the total supply, of which only 20% was immediately available, and he said he wouldn’t sell.
- Either exchanges with their allocation started dumping the cryptocurrency, or Sun himself did it via HTX: he offered 20% APR for a WLFI deposit and, under that cover, was selling his tokens.
Trump’s cryptocurrency investors believe the project team should consider burning Sun’s coins. That way they could punish the businessman for manipulation and support the price of the crashed WLFI token.
The end of a friendship
Justin Sun, like many other notable members of the crypto community, tried to get into Donald Trump’s inner circle. The point is that during the election campaign the politician bet on the development of the crypto industry. Sun and many other crypto entrepreneurs saw this as a chance to promote their businesses.
A vivid example is the TRON founder’s participation at a dinner with Trump. The politician organized an event that only the largest investors in his TRUMP memecoin could attend. Sun didn’t miss the chance to attend the dinner.
Now, as the businessman is accused of manipulating Trump’s crypto project, his company could face problems. Recall that on June 16, 2025, media reported plans for TRON to go public. Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, hinted that he would receive a high-profile post in the project. Notably, that message disappeared from his page amid the conflict between Sun and World Liberty.
Previously, TRON had faced complaints from regulators, but with the rise to power of crypto-friendly Trump and the businessman’s attempt to befriend the president and his family, pressure on the crypto project eased. The problems seemed to resolve themselves and Sun started talking about an IPO. However, the quarrel with Trump over accusations of manipulating WLFI could once again darken the skies over TRON.
Conclusions
The crypto community has no doubt — Sun is involved in WLFI’s price collapse. The stunt could cost the businessman the IPO of his TRON crypto project, which until recently had been unthinkable given how many issues regulators had with the company.
At the time of writing, the World Liberty team limited itself to blocking Sun’s tokens. Still, such actions already suggest the platform’s representatives suspect the businessman of market manipulation.
There have been no statements yet from Trump or his family. The Quickex editorial team will continue to monitor developments.
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