Hong Kong-based crypto magnate and art collector Justin Sun rocketed to a new level of fame overnight on November 21, when he plunked down $6.2 million at Sotheby’s New York for Comedian (2019), the cheeky conceptual piece by Italian trickster-artist Maurizio Cattelan. But he made a considerably larger and potentially much more consequential investment a few days later, when he sank $30 million into Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency project, World Liberty Financial, which aims to “make finance great again.” 

This made Sun, the founder of crypto platform Tron, the company’s largest investor, and, following to the terms laid out in the project’s “gold paper,” will result in a payout of at least $15 million to the Trumps, according to Bloomberg, which reports that the venture was largely a flop until Sun came along.

“The U.S. is becoming the blockchain hub, and Bitcoin owes it to @realDonaldTrump ! TRON is committed to making America great again and leading innovation. Let’s go!” Sun wrote on X.

The purchase could put a U.S. legal case against Sun in jeopardy.

Sun is battling a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which sued him in 2023 for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities, for defrauding investors by manipulating the price of his own cryptocurrency with fake transactions called “wash trading,” and for orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities including Lindsay Lohan and Jake Paul to promote his assets without disclosing their compensation. Sun denies the charges.

Then-Republican presidential contestant and former U.S. President Donald Trump visits a cryptocurrency-themed bar called Pubkey in the West Village on September 18, 2024. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

Sun told Bloomberg that “he didn’t expect any favors from Trump in exchange for his investment.” But in the recent U.S. elections, the crypto industry supported candidates advocating more lenient regulations on the sector to the tune of more than $100 million. “We now have the most pro-crypto Congress in history,” said Paul Grewal, the chief legal officer for Coinbase. Those lawmakers stand to pass legislation that would create an end run around the SEC, which has staunchly pursued lawsuits against companies in the sector.

Trump’s own stance on cryptocurrency has evolved considerably. While he was U.S. president, he declared Bitcoin “not money,” describing it as “highly volatile and based on thin air.” But in July 2024, he would go on to address a Bitcoin convention, where he promised to fire SEC chair Gary Gensler “on Day 1” and create a “strategic national Bitcoin stockpile.”

Via World Liberty Financial.

Then, in September, just weeks before Election Day, Trump launched World Liberty Financial, co-founded by online entrepreneurs Chase Herro, the self-proclaimed “dirtbag of the internet,” and Zachary Folkman, who, among other previous ventures, has taught classes in seducing women. A U.S. president running a crypto company while also overseeing the SEC creates the possibility of enormous conflicts of interest, according to experts.

Leaders and investors in the industry donated millions to Trump’s campaign and aligned political committees, CNN reported.

World Liberty appointed Sun an advisor, along with Trump, the company’s “Chief Crypto Advocate,” and his sons, Barron, Donald Jr., and Eric, all dubbed “Web3 Ambassadors.”

Sun has staged a number of stunts as a way to advocate for the new form of currency. In 2021, he paid $4.6 million at a charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffett, hoping to change the mega-investor’s mind about crypto, which Buffett called “probably rat poison squared,” among other colorful critiques. (Sun did not succeed, despite presenting Buffett with a phone with a bitcoin on it.) In a blockchain-based election this past October, Sun became the prime minister and speaker of Congress of the self-proclaimed micro-nation of Liberland, in Eastern Europe. 

Even before the Cattelan purchase, Sun was a heavy-duty art collector, as Artnet News reported in 2021, a year when he spent upward of  $100 million to scoop up pricey works by Alberto Giacometti, KAWS, Murat Pak, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol.