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Crypto mogul Justin Sun launches ‘perps’ trading as US lawmakers question his Trump ties
Tron founder introduces perpetual futures trading as lawmakers ask the SEC to look into issues surrounding Sun’s ties to the Trump family
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Tron blockchain founder Justin Sun has unveiled a new financial product linked to USDT, the world’s most popular stablecoin, as Democratic lawmakers called on the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to look into “concerning ties” between the cryptocurrency entrepreneur and US President Donald Trump’s family.
In a social media post on Friday, Sun said he launched a website dedicated to “perpetual futures”, also known as “perps” – financial instruments that allow traders to speculate on the price of an asset at an unspecified point in the future. He pointed out that “Tron is a major USDT network” and that “perps were one of USDT’s earliest use cases”.
That initiative reflects Sun’s efforts to burnish the credentials of Tron, which he founded and launched in 2018.
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The new perps trading website, however, was introduced at a time when two Democratic members of the US Congress, representative Sean Casten and senator Jeff Merkley, wrote a public letter to the SEC to complain about “a litany of issues” surrounding Sun’s ties to the Trump family and Tron’s recent listing on the Nasdaq stock market via a reverse merger.
The lawmakers said Sun made “sizeable” investments in two cryptocurrency projects – the $TRUMP memecoin and the World Liberty Financial token WLFI – since Trump’s re-election in November, which “directly enriched the President and his family”.
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Tron did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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