Trump family crypto firm sued over alleged ‘extortion’, report says

The Trump family's World Liberty crypto venture is being sued by one of its billionaire backers over allegations of extortion.

Crypto billionaire Justin Sun and his companies sued World Liberty Financial, a crypto project co-founded by President Donald Trump, accusing the company of extortion and an “illegal scheme” to seize his tokens.

Sun alleges the firm, co-founded by US President Donald Trump and his son Eric Trump, has "frozen" all of his tokens and stripped him of his right to vote on governance issues.

In a complaint filed Tuesday in San Francisco federal court, Sun also claimed that “World Liberty is on the verge of collapse” and questioned whether it holds enough reserves to back its USD1 stablecoin.

Sun invested a total of $45 million to buy 3 billion of World Liberty’s WLFI tokens in 2024 and 2025, and was awarded another billion WLFI tokens for advising the project, according to the suit.

But he says his relationship with World Liberty’s team soured mid-last year, after he declined to provide more investment and support to the project. In recent weeks, Sun and World Liberty have been exchanging punches on social network X amid the project’s deepening clash with early investors.

Sun is an ardent supporter of Trump and his stance on cryptocurrencies, but accused "certain individuals" associated with World Liberty of acting against the president's values.

"They wrongfully froze all of my tokens, stripped me of my right to vote on governance proposals, and have threatened to permanently destroy my tokens by 'burning' them - all without any proper justification," he said in a social media post announcing the lawsuit.

Sun is the founder of a separate multi-billion dollar crypto project, TRON. He initially invested $45m (£33m) in World Liberty and said that, at times, his WLFI tokens have been valued at more than $1bn (£740m).

Since September, the price of a single WLFI token has plunged from 31 cents to just under 8 cents.