Justin Sun is one of the most controversial figures in cryptocurrency. But he has said he could take legal action to combat bombshell allegations by tech publication The Verge about his leadership of blockchain network TRON and management of Poloniex crypto exchange.
The China-born tech entrepreneur, who founded TRON in 2018 before purchasing peer-to-peer software firm BitTorrent later that year and then investing in Poloniex in 2019, today tweeted: "It is a complete falsehood on the part of the Verge and the reporter and a blatant defamation about the Poloniex operation."
The damning report, published today, accused Sun of using TRON and Poloniex for a slew of misdeeds, including business practices that could potentially be illegal. The article, "The Many Escapes of Justin Sun," was written by Christopher Harland-Dunaway, who in September 2020 penned an equally explosive article about Sun's purchase of BitTorrent.
In a series of Twitter posts, Sun said of Poloniex: "Polo enjoys robust risk management and strong financial resources that have provided top of class services to our customers throughout its history."
Initial response to the false accusations and fabricated storytelling of the verge article.
— H.E. Justin Sun 🅣🌞🇬🇩 (@justinsuntron) March 9, 2022
He added: "Further, we have always strived to collaborate with regulators and invested in state-of-the-art KYC facilities in line with the industry standard."
He went on to refute the article's claim that the exchange is based in the Seychelles and noted that it doesn't serve U.S. residents. As Decrypt previously reported, after Poloniex was purchased from Circle, the exchange announced it would shut off U.S. customers' access to the site in December 2019.
In April 2020, Poloniex pushed forward with a platform to launch initial exchange offerings, a mechanism for selling new tokens via the exchange, despite regulatory scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. More recently, in August 2021, the exchange settled for $10 million with the SEC over the agency's allegations it listed securities before Sun's purchase of Poloniex; it neither admitted nor denied the findings.
Sun has drummed up publicity in the past, for good and ill, by buying a dinner with anti-Bitcoin investor Warren Buffett, allegedly paying celebrities to promote Tron (which he denies), purchasing a spot on the Blue Origin rocket, and, most recently, complaining that the Ukraine government wouldn't airdrop crypto to TRON users who donated funds to the war effort.