April 21 (Reuters) - Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against U.S. President Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial in California federal court, seeking to unfreeze his WLFI tokens and block the venture from seizing, burning or curbing them.
Sun, a major investor in World Liberty Financial, said the crypto venture wrongfully froze all of his tokens without valid justification.
The step deprived him of his voting rights on governance proposals, added Sun, who threatened to permanently eliminate the tokens by "burning" them, a process of destruction that would strip him of ownership.
In a post on social media platform X, Sun said he tried to resolve the situation in "good faith" but the project team rejected his requests to unfreeze the tokens and reinstate his rights.
"They have left me with no choice but to turn to the courts," he added.
World Liberty Financial declined to comment on the matter.
It is the most prominent of several lucrative crypto businesses co-founded by the Trump family. At its 2024 launch, it promised small investors power over financial flows through a still unveiled "decentralised finance" app.
The lawsuit follows a proposal last week by the venture that would indefinitely lock the tokens of holders who do not affirmatively accept its terms, including a provision for the permanent burning of 10% of all adviser tokens.
Sun said he "strongly opposes the new governance proposal," but could not vote on it as World Liberty froze his early investor tokens.
In late 2024 Sun became the largest publicly known investor in the then-fledgling company, spending millions of dollars on the WLFI token and being named an adviser to it.
Later he upped his holdings to at least $75 million of the tokens, his social media posts from January 2025 showed.
(Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Clarence Fernandez)
