Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, said he’s “thrilled” to become the largest investor in Donald Trump’s new DeFi project, World Liberty Financial (WLFI).
The controversial crypto magnate announced he had bought $30 million worth of the project’s tokens despite its disappointingly slow start.
On Monday, HTX, a Sun-controlled crypto exchange, was seen on Etherscan purchasing 2 billion WLFI tokens worth $0.015 each.
Shortly after the purchase, Sun took to X to celebrate becoming the biggest investor in the project so far.
“We are thrilled to invest $30 million in World Liberty Financial as its largest investor,” Sun wrote in a Nov. 25 X post.
“TRON is committed to making America great again and leading innovation,” he added.
Sun has run into some hot water with U.S. regulators in recent years.
In 2023, the Tron founder was sued alongside the Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and parent company Rainberry Inc.
The U.S. regulator claimed that the 2017 distribution of TRX through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) was the sale of an unregistered security.
However, in March 2024, the Tron Foundation filed a motion with a New York federal court to counteract the lawsuit.
The Singapore-based firm argued that the SEC was “not a worldwide regulator” and had no authority over “foreign digital asset offerings to foreign purchasers on global platforms.”
The WLFI project, which Trump has licensed his name to the venture through an LLC, is aiming to be a type of digital asset bank.
President-elect Trump is operating as the project’s “chief crypto advocate,” with his three sons listed as “Web3 ambassadors.”
WLFI began with an ambitious goal of raising $300 million, which would require selling 20 billion tokens.
However, the slow start to the Trump-backed WLFI DeFi project forced it to lower its initial sales target by 90% last month to just $30 million.
Before Sun’s purchase, only $20 million worth of WLFI had been sold, bringing total sales to $52 million.
The renewed smaller target means that the project has met its goal, and the Trumps can now receive some of its revenue.
According to WLFI’s “gold paper,” Trump’s company, DT Marks DEFI LLC, can receive 75% of the project’s net revenues when it makes $30 million.