World Liberty Financial hits back at crypto billionaire Justin Sun with a defamation suit, claim he was betting against token
World Liberty Financial is hitting back at crypto billionaire Justin Sun with a defamation suit — and claims he was betting against the very token he was publicly hyping as “one of the biggest projects in crypto” as part of an alleged short-and-distort scheme.The Florida-based decentralized finance company, launched in 2024 and backed by the Trump sons, filed the suit Monday in Miami-Dade County state court, just days after Sun sued them for fraud in California federal court.Sun’s suit, filed April 21, claims World Liberty tried to pressure him into investing “hundreds of millions of dollars” more into its USD1 stablecoin, the company’s main product.When he refused, Sun alleges, World Liberty froze his holdings in retaliation.But World Liberty is clapping back with a very different story.
According to their complaint, Sun orchestrated a deliberate smear campaign against the company after they froze his assets.Sun’s entity Blue Anthem began investing $30 million in $WLFI tokens starting November 2024 (he went on to invest a total of $45M and was awarded additional tokens for taking a board seat).World Liberty says late last year it discovered Sun was allegedly violating his investment terms including making unauthorized transfers of tokens to Binance, conducting straw purchases of $WLFI on behalf of undisclosed third parties, and suspected short-selling of the token despite contractual obligations barring it — which led them to freeze his tokens.After they froze his assets Sun publicly called $WLFI “one of the biggest and most important projects in crypto,” said he was “fully aligned with the mission,” and declared he had “no plans to sell our unlocked tokens anytime soon.”The suit claims the ongoing praise was a money grab.Behind the scenes, Sun was warning that if World Liberty took action against him it would “light World Liberty on fire,” cause the $WLFI token price to “go to s–,” and be “bad for the whole industry.” ...