WLFI Token Controversy: Justin Sun Denies Selling Rumors Following Address Blacklist

Trump-backed DeFi project World Liberty Financial has blacklisted an address linked to Justin Sun after it reportedly transferred some of its WLFI tokens, sparking allegations of market manipulation.

On Thursday, World Liberty Financial reportedly blacklisted the Tron founder’s address following his recent movements of his WLFI holdings and multiple online accusations that he was selling.

According to Arkham data, Sun claimed 600 million WLFI tokens at the Token Generation Event (TGE), valued at $200 million at the time, as 20% of the 100 billion tokens were unlocked.

The Tron founder was one of the earliest investors in World Liberty Financial in 2024 and was recognized as the top holder of US President Donald Trump’s official memecoin, TRUMP, earlier this year.

On September 1, he shared his conviction on the token, affirming that WLFI “will be one of the biggest and most important projects in crypto.” He also stated that he had “no plans to sell our unlocked tokens anytime soon. The long-term vision here is too powerful, and I’m fully aligned with the mission.”

Nonetheless, multiple on-chain analysis platforms revealed that Sun had started to move his unlocked tokens, sparking rumors that he was selling. On-chain data showed that he had sent 4.9 million WLFI to crypto exchange HTX, owned by the Tron Founder, over the past two days.

Sun reportedly transferred 50 million tokens, worth $9.12 million, to a new wallet on Thursday morning, “likely to be deposited into HTX.” Meanwhile, Wu Blockchain noted that over the past 32 hours, HTX address “HTX 48” transferred approximately 60,000,000 WLFI tokens to Binance deposit address 0xf387D7…29FcB5.

Following the $9 million move, “World Liberty Financial’s controlling address 0x407F…5178 called the guardianSetBlacklistStatus function on the WLFI Token contract, blacklisting the address 0x5AB2…DA74, which is associated with Justin Sun,” Wu Blockchain explained.

The action froze Sun’s unlocked and 2.4 billion locked WLFI tokens. Tron’s founder responded to the accusations on X, stating that his address just conducted “a few test deposits on exchanges with very low amounts, followed by an address distribution.”

He added that these tests “did not involve any trading activities and could not have impacted the market in any way,” but did not comment on the blacklist. At the time of writing, World Liberty Financial has not addressed the situation.

The news comes as WLFI’s price struggles just three days after launching. Earlier today, the token hit an all-time low (ATL) of $0.16 before bouncing to the $0.18 mark. This performance represents a 20% decline over the past 24 hours and a nearly 45% drop from its all-time high (ATH) of $0.33.

Market watcher Daan Crypto Trades noted that the cryptocurrency has broken down from a triangle formation, where the price was compressing for the past two days. According to the trader, WLFI saw a “quick acceleration as expected” and “even gave a nice retest before the continuation down.”

Meanwhile, analyst Ali Martinez suggested that te bottom might not be in, highlighting that the token now risks a 25%-50% drop after losing the $0.20 area as support.