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Tron Founder Justin Sun Just Bought These Altcoins
- Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, has recently withdrawn approximately US$7.5 million worth of various crypto, including Shiba Inu and others, from Binance exchanges.
- The SEC has sued Justin Sun and his organisations for selling TRX and BTT tokens, which they consider unregistered securities.
- They also allege Sun and his companies engaged in over 600,000 wash trades to artificially inflate TRX’s trading volume.
Sun Moves Almost USD $7.5 Million Off Exchanges
Justin Sun, Tron founder and influential figure in the crypto community with 3.4 million followers on platform X, has made some large transactions on Binance recently. The withdrawal of USD$5 million (AU$7.44 million) in popular meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) comes only a day after he made several other altcoins transactions and withdrawals.
On December 17, Sun bought and moved off Binance 127,510 LINK (US$1.85M or AU$2.75M), 202,385 STORJ (US$200K or AU$297K), 53.68 billion PEPE (US$76.7K or AU$114K) and 13,904 DYDX (US$43K or AU$94K).
Sun holds a total of US$1.4 billion (AU$2.1 billion) in several wallets – at least those that are publicly known. According to unverified reports, the billionaire has large holdings in TRX, BTT, USDD and others. Sun made his fortunes on the back of the launch of his Tron blockchain, which had raised in an initial coin offering US$70 million (AU$104 million) in funds. At the time of writing Tron has a market cap of US$8.9 billion (AU$13.3 billion), while DeFi Llama shows a total value locked of US$8.2 billion (AU$12.2 billion), making it one of the largest blockchains.
SEC Alleges TRON is a Security
Sun’s rise to fame hasn’t come without issues. In March of 2023 the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Sun and his associated organisations for selling and airdropping tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) tokens, which they classified as unregistered crypto asset securities. The lawsuit also accuses them of fraudulently manipulating the secondary market of TRX through an extensive wash trading scheme.
Specifically, Sun is alleged to have artificially inflated TRX’s trading volume by having employees engage in over 600,000 wash trades between accounts he controlled. This involved the coordination of Tron Foundation and BitTorrent employees, as well as fund transfers by Rainberry employees to facilitate this trading.
The SEC chair, Gary Gensler made comments at the time, highlighting the involvement of Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul and other celebrities which have also been on the SEC radar.
As alleged, Sun and his companies not only targeted US investors in their unregistered offers and sales, generating millions in illegal proceeds at the expense of investors, but they also coordinated wash trading on an unregistered trading platform to create the misleading appearance of active trading in TRX. Sun further induced investors to purchase TRX and BTT by orchestrating a promotional campaign in which he and his celebrity promoters hid the fact that the celebrities were paid for their tweets.
Gary Gensler, SEC Chair CoinDesk reported on December 13 that Sun and his legal team received an extension by the regulator to respond to the allegations, according to court documents the publication has access to.
Author
Aaron Feuerstein
Aaron Feuerstein is a freelance writer based in Melbourne. His focus is on decentralised finance and the regulatory space surrounding blockchain. He holds a Master's in Accounting. When he is not studying the latest legal case, he enjoys his time as a modest but eager hobby cook.
