Trump’s Crypto Project Was a Bust Until Justin Sun Stepped In
- His $30 million investment gives struggling venture a boost
- Sun, who also paid $6 million for banana art, faces SEC suit
Donald Trump speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27.
Photographer: Brett Carlsen/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Donald Trump’s crypto project, World Liberty Financial, was looking like a bust. The president-elect and his sons had been promoting its cryptocurrency for weeks, saying it would “make finance great again,” but the industry largely rejected it. Sales fell 93% short of the goal, so low they failed to hit the minimum required to trigger a payout to Trump.
Then on Nov. 25, Justin Sun, a flashy China-born crypto founder, announced he was investing $30 million in World Liberty tokens. That pushed the project over the threshold, and the Trumps now stand to collect at least $15 million, based on terms detailed in World Liberty’s “gold paper.”