Justin Sun has publicly attacked World Liberty Financial, the crypto project tied to Donald Trump, saying its treatment of token holders was illegitimate and extractive. He said the people behind the project were treating the crypto community like a personal ATM and argued that the moves ran against the basic idea of decentralization.
At the center of the dispute is a blacklist function embedded in the project’s smart contracts. Sun said this feature was never disclosed to investors and gave issuers the power to freeze, restrict, and effectively confiscate tokens without prior notice or justification. World Liberty Financial said the measures were taken in response to “malicious or high-risk activity that could harm community members.”
595M WLFI frozen, with nearly 2.4B locked tokens also seized
Sun said he was one of the main targets of a large blacklisting action in September, which froze 595 million WLFI. He added that those tokens have continued losing value since the freeze. He also said nearly 2.4 billion locked WLFI tokens, still subject to vesting at the time, were seized as well.
He called for the immediate release of the tokens blocked from him and other investors. In his view, the actions have damaged trust in the project and risk hurting confidence among future market participants looking at similar crypto offerings.
Sun says governance votes were neither fair nor transparent
Sun said every action taken against investors was never authorized through any fair, transparent, or good-faith governance process. He challenged the governance votes cited by the project, saying key information was withheld from voters, meaningful participation was restricted, and the outcomes had already been determined before the votes took place.
The source material states that Sun invested $30 million in World Liberty Financial in 2024 and later joined the project as an advisor. He also said he had consistently supported Trump’s crypto-friendly policies, but drew a clear line between that stance and the handling of investor assets in this case.
Discussion around wallet movements tied to World Liberty Financial has already triggered strong backlash on social media. Sun’s remarks have pushed the controversy back onto familiar fault lines in crypto: on-chain control, token governance, and the rights of investors once assets are inside a project’s system.