'I am innocent': Justin Sun calls for World Liberty Financial to unfreeze his WLFI tokens

Tron founder and early World Liberty Financial investor Justin Sun took to X early Friday morning to plead his innocence to the Trump family-backed DeFi project, requesting that it release his WLFI tokens following a blacklisting of his address on Thursday.

"I have contributed not only capital but also my trust and support for the future of this project. My goal has always been to grow alongside the team and community, and to jointly build a strong and healthy WLF ecosystem," Sun said. "However, during the course of operations, my tokens were unreasonably frozen."

Sun added that he bought WLFI in the same way as anyone else and "deserves the same rights," calling the tokens "sacred and inviolable," and part of what makes blockchain "stronger and more fair than traditional finance."

"I call on the team to respect these principles, unlock my tokens, and let's move forward together toward the success of World Liberty Financial," Sun said. "I believe that a truly great financial brand must be built on fairness, transparency, and trust — not on unilateral actions that freeze investor assets. Such measures not only violate the legitimate rights of investors, but also risk damaging broader confidence in World Liberty Financial."

Responding to Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik's post on the nuance of the situation, Sun declared, "I am innocent."

World Liberty blacklists Justin Sun's wallet amid token transfers and price drop

The WLFI token contract blacklisted an address linked to Sun on Thursday afternoon, effectively freezing WLFI at the address and revoking his ability to send or receive the tokens and participate in governance.

World Liberty Financial has yet to publicly comment on the blacklisting and did not return a request for comment from The Block regarding the situation. It's therefore unclear exactly why the freezing took place. However, it came within hours of the Justin Sun-labeled address sending 50 million WLFI, worth around $9 million, to an address that an HTX hot wallet-labeled wallet sent 0.2 ETH ($872) to just before Sun's transfer, according to Arkham. Sun is strongly linked to the crypto exchange and is a member of HTX's Global Advisory Board.

The 50 million WLFI were subsequently transferred again on Friday morning, routing via an unlabeled address before arriving at the same HTX hot wallet. Some 60 million WLFI ($11.1 million) were later sent from the hot wallet onto an HTX Gnosis Safe Proxy address, per Arkham's dashboard.

"I think it's totally fair that your tokens were locked. You probably had a verbal agreement with the Trumps not to sell your tokens," one community member alleged, demonstrating broader frustration, though Sun's transfer did not mean that the tokens were necessarily sold.

The crypto community also noted that on Thursday, HTX address "HTX 48," the same hot wallet address identified by Arkham, had also transferred approximately 60 million WLFI tokens to a Binance deposit address over the prior two days amid accusations of selling. This came during a period of substantial exchange deposit flow more generally, including via BitGo and Flowdesk, according to Nansen, with the volume spike creating extreme selling pressure.

"A Binance deposit wallet connected to Justin Sun received over 60 million WLFI tokens worth $12M yesterday from HTX," Coinbase executive Conor Grogan said on Thursday. "The 60M WLFI deposit represents about 52.6% of HTX's total WLFI holdings at present from what I can find onchain based on HTX's public wallets." Arkham has also tentatively linked the Binance deposit address to Justin Sun. 

"Our address only carried out a few general exchange deposit tests with very small amounts, followed by an address dispersion," Sun said in response to those allegations. "No buying or selling was involved, so it could not possibly have any impact on the market." Of course, the simple transfer of funds from large crypto token holders can often spook the market, however.

World Liberty Financial's native token started trading on crypto exchanges on Monday. WLFI plunged by around 24% at one point on Thursday, though the majority of that move was ahead of Sun's transfer. It subsequently recovered slightly and is currently trading for $0.19, according to The Block's WLFI price page.

WLFI/USD price chart. Image: The Block/TradingView.

Sun has been one of the biggest supporters of both World Liberty Financial and Trump's memecoin. The crypto billionaire was named an advisor to the DeFi project and bought $75 million worth of WLFI tokens. He also committed to buy $100 million worth of the president's TRUMP memecoin.

In January, World Liberty Financial bought millions of dollars' worth of Tron's TRX token.