World Liberty Financial hits back at crypto – Business News
World Liberty Financial is hitting back at crypto billionaire Justin Sun with a defamation swimsuit — and claims he was betting towards the very token he was publicly hyping as “one of the biggest projects in crypto” as half of an alleged short-and-distort scheme.
The Florida-based decentralized finance company, launched in 2024 and backed by the Trump sons, filed the swimsuit Monday in Miami-Dade County state court docket, simply days after Sun sued them for fraud in California federal court docket.
Sun’s swimsuit, filed April 21, claims World Liberty tried to strain him into investing “hundreds of millions of dollars” more into its USD1 stablecoin, the company’s most important product. When he refused, Sun alleges, World Liberty froze his holdings in retaliation.
World Liberty Financial has filed a defamation swimsuit towards crypto billionaire Justin Sun. REUTERS
But World Liberty is clapping back with a very totally different story. According to their grievance, Sun orchestrated a deliberate smear marketing campaign towards the company after they froze his belongings.
Sun’s entity Blue Anthem started investing $30 million in $WLFI tokens beginning November 2024 (he went on to invest a whole of $45M and was awarded further tokens for taking a board seat).
World Liberty says late final yr it found Sun was allegedly violating his investment phrases together with making unauthorized transfers of tokens to Binance, conducting straw purchases of $WLFI on behalf of undisclosed third events, and suspected short-selling of the token regardless of contractual obligations barring it — which led them to freeze his tokens.
After they froze his belongings Sun publicly known as $WLFI “one of the biggest and most important projects in crypto,” mentioned he was “fully aligned with the mission,” and declared he had “no plans to sell our unlocked tokens anytime soon.”
The swimsuit claims the continued reward was a money grab. Behind the scenes, Sun was warning that if World Liberty took motion towards him it might “light World Liberty on fire,” trigger the $WLFI token price to “go to s–,” and be “bad for the whole industry.” Sun wished tons of of tens of millions of greenback in a payout to remain quiet, however World Liberty refused.
On April 12, 2026, Sun went public along with his claims. In a post to his 3.9 million X followers, he accused World Liberty of embedding “a backdoor blacklisting function in the smart contract” and known as it “a trap door marketed as an open door.” He accused the company of performing to “treat the crypto community as a personal ATM” and denounced “the ongoing token scandals by the bad actors at WLFI.”
The Florida-based finance company, co-founded by Zach Witkoff, filed the swimsuit days after Sun sued the group for fraud. AP
Three more posts adopted by April 15, together with a prolonged screed Sun titled “This Is World Tyranny, Not World Liberty Financial,” by which he known as a new governance proposal “one of the most absurd governance scams I have ever seen” and declared World Liberty’s governance construction “dictatorship wearing the mask of a DAO.” Sun revealed each assault in each English and Mandarin Chinese. Combined, the posts drew roughly 4 million views and obtained main media protection.
World Liberty says at least one business deal collapsed as a direct outcome — a potential partnership with Native Market that the company walked away from after Sun’s marketing campaign.
“Rather than acting in good faith, Justin Sun chose to defame World Liberty — repeatedly, publicly, and to millions of followers,” mentioned Tom Clare, a high anti-defamation lawyer who has labored with Johnny Depp and Brigitte Macron, and is representing World Liberty. “We are eager to expose the falsity of Sun’s statements in court and in public.”
“We’re going to win this case based on the facts,” mentioned Eric Hageman, an lawyer at Clare Locke. “When he didn’t get his way, Sun threatened to ‘light World Liberty on fire’ and cause the $WLFI token price to ‘go to s–.’ Those were not idle words. When World Liberty refused to reverse a lawful and justified token freeze, Sun went to the press and to social media to execute on his threats. This lawsuit sends an unambiguous message: threatening World Liberty and then following through with a coordinated defamation campaign is tortious conduct, and it has consequences.”
The grievance argues Sun knew his claims had been false as a result of he had personally signed agreements disclosing World Liberty’s proper to freeze tokens — and had publicly praised the project after studying of that very same authority.
World Liberty is searching for compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to a court docket order forcing Sun to retract all posts.
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WLFI has drawn scrutiny for its ties to the Trump administration. Among its co-founders is Zach Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East.
Sun didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
