Banana auction billionaire invests in Trump’s crypto venture

Tron blockchain founder Justin Sun has invested $30 million into Donald Trump’s crypto project, World Liberty Financial, he announced Monday.

“We are thrilled to invest $30 million in World Liberty Financial @worldlibertyfi as its largest investor,” Sun wrote in a post on X.

Sun recently made national headlines when he spent $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for a banana duct-taped to a wall.

World Liberty Financial, the Trump-branded crypto platform, aspires to be a sort of digital asset bank, where customers will be encouraged to borrow, lend and invest in digital coins. On Tuesday, the crypto bank announced that Sun would be joining the platform as an advisor.

Trump has licensed his name and promotional considerations to the venture through an LLC, with no assumption of liability. In exchange, Trump’s LLC received billions of tokens and the right to 75% of revenues above a $30 million threshold.

The platform launched a WLFI token last month, and said in a roadmap that it was looking to raise $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in its initial sale. 

Before Sun’s investment, $21.2 million worth of the token had been sold. As of Monday afternoon, $51.2 million worth of the token had been sold, according to its website. Sales now appear to have crossed the $30 million threshold to trigger revenue distribution to Trump’s LLC.

“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!” added Sun.

WLFI co-founder Zachary Folkman has said “well over 100,000 people” are on the whitelist to invest in the token. But as of Monday afternoon, only about 20,400 unique wallet addresses hold the token, according to blockchain data tracked by Etherscan, representing roughly 20% of the total number of people who registered.

“There have been a number of similarly significant purchases in recent weeks, and we are confident about future success and building out something that helps to make finance freer and fairer,” Folkman said in a statement. “We expect more such developments to happen in the coming weeks and months.”

While Trump does not take office until January, Sun’s investment in WLFI, and the revenue it appears to direct to Trump’s LLC under the terms disclosed, highlights the way Trump’s newer business ventures, like his social media company Trump Media Technology Group and this crypto venture, could offer more direct opportunities for individuals to enrich the president-elect than Trump’s hotels and office buildings did.

During Trump’s first term in office, there were near constant questions about whether foreign governments’ lavish spending on rooms and banquets at Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel amounted to violations of the Constitution’s “emoluments clause.”

The clause bars federal…