Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain, announced this week that he had purchased yet another $100 million of Donald Trump’s memecoin, $TRUMP. Sun already owns a substantial amount of the asset. The crypto mogul also announced that the coin would soon be tradable on his blockchain.
All of this is complicated by the fact that Sun still appears to be bogged down in a civil fraud case brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2023, the SEC launched a lawsuit against Sun and his companies, accusing them of market manipulation. In February, reports indicated that the SEC was seeking a potential resolution to the case. This was not long after Sun had invested $30 million into Trump’s other crypto project, World Liberty Financial. There hasn’t been an update since then.
″$TRUMP on TRON is the currency of #MAGA,” Sun wrote on X on Wednesday. “This move highlights our belief in collaborating across ecosystems to grow the crypto landscape,” he added.
You might think that buying tens of millions of dollars worth of the president’s cryptocurrency at the same time that you’re mired in a federal legal case is a conflict of interest—and it sure seems like one—but that’s not particularly shocking these days. The Trump administration’s tagline might as well be Making Conflicts of Interest Acceptable Again, given the level of dubious behavior going on at the moment.
It’s somewhat mystifying as to why Sun would be so interested in Trump’s crypto projects. CNBC notes:
The $TRUMP coin has whipsawed since its January launch, peaking at a $15 billion market cap on its first day of trading before sliding sharply to about $2 billion as of July. The complementary $MELANIA token, meanwhile, has plunged more than 90% from its offering price in January to less than $141 million.
Sun is an interesting character, and obviously has plenty of money to burn—maybe too much. Last year, he used $6 million to buy an art piece that was just a banana taped to a wall. He subsequently ate the banana, showing a certain creative brilliance when it comes to generating ridiculous ways to burn cash for no reason at all. His companies include the Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc. (formerly BitTorrent).