IN 2023 THINGS were not looking good for Justin Sun, a billionaire crypto-mogul. The Securities and Exchange Commission had accused him of fraud. The regulator claimed that the companies he founded and controlled had issued unregistered securities (two crypto tokens, Tron and BitTorrent); had manipulated the markets in those securities by “wash trading(虚假交易)” to make the tokens look active and useful; and had paid celebrities to endorse them without disclosing they were being paid. In the wake of the allegations he stepped down from a diplomatic post he held as a trade representative for Grenada, an island in the Caribbean. He was afraid to set foot in America lest he get arrested. By the end of the year two other kings of crypto would be toppled(倒台、推翻): Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was convicted of fraud, and Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, pleaded guilty(认罪) to violating American money-laundering laws.
2023年，对于亿万富翁加密货币大亨孙宇晨来说，情况并不乐观。美国证券交易委员会指控他欺诈。监管机构声称，他创立并控制的公司发行了未经注册的证券（两种加密货币代币：Tron和BitTorrent）；通过“洗售”操纵这些证券的市场，使代币看起来活跃且有用；并付费让名人代言这些代币，却未披露他们接受了报酬。这些指控发生后，他辞去了担任的加勒比海岛国格林纳达贸易代表的外交职务。他害怕踏足美国，唯恐被捕。到年底，另外两位加密货币之王也倒台了：FTX的创始人山姆·班克曼-弗里德被判欺诈罪，币安的创始人赵长鹏承认违反了美国反洗钱法。
The case was supposedly(据说、据称) a strong one—but by November 2024 it had not yet reached court. Then, less than three weeks after(在……之后不到三周) Donald Trump won the election, Mr Sun began to buy $75m-worth of tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a crypto project in which the Trump family would receive 75% of the proceeds(收益、收入) of any crypto-token sales. In March 2025 the case the SEC had brought was suddenly settled, with no admission of wrongdoing(不承认不当行为) and a $10m fine (small, given the gravity of the charges). Eleven days later the head of enforcement at the SEC resigned.
这个案件据说很有力——但到2024年11月仍未开庭。然后，在唐纳德·特朗普赢得大选不到三周后，孙先生开始从World Liberty Financial（WLFI）购买价值7500万美元的代币，这是一个加密项目，特朗普家族将获得任何加密代币销售收益的75%。2025年3月，SEC提起的案件突然和解，没有承认任何不当行为，并处以1000万美元罚款（考虑到指控的严重性，这笔罚款很小）。十一天后，SEC执法部门负责人辞职。
Now Mr Sun is alleging he was duped(被欺骗、被愚弄). On April 21st he filed a federal lawsuit in California against World Liberty, alleging various forms of mistreatment. Mr Sun says his tokens were frozen, meaning he could not sell them. At first, buyers were not allowed to sell their holdings—but this blanket restriction(全面限制) was lifted in September 2025. At that point Mr Sun should have been able to sell his tokens, along with everyone else, but he could not, a restriction he claims has cost him $276m, as the tokens have since dropped significantly in value. He also says he was stripped of(被剥夺) his right to vote on the rules for how the tokens were managed—a common feature of decentralised finance projects—and that World Liberty Financial had “threatened to permanently destroy my tokens by ‘burning’ them”.
现在孙先生声称自己被骗了。4月21日，他在加利福尼亚州对World Liberty提起联邦诉讼，指控各种不当对待。孙先生表示他的代币被冻结，无法出售。起初，买家不允许出售其持仓——但这项全面限制于2025年9月解除。当时，孙先生本应和其他人一样能够出售代币，但他却不能，他声称这一限制导致他损失了2.76亿美元，因为此后代币价值大幅下跌。他还表示自己被剥夺了对代币管理规则进行投票的权利——这是去中心化金融项目的常见特征——并且World Liberty Financial曾“威胁要通过‘销毁’永久毁灭我的代币”。