en
Back to the list

Justin Sun’s empire may be on the verge of collapse

source-logo  protos.com 20 June 2024 16:50, UTC

Justin Sun is one of the richest and most important individuals in the cryptocurrency ecosystem; however, his tendency to spread his vast wealth between a variety of different interconnected entities and addresses can make identifying the full extent of his activities very difficult.

Protos has reviewed many of the addresses we believe to be controlled by Sun and found a variety of different assets on Tron and Ethereum being rapidly moved between protocols and exchanges.

Ethereum

0x176F3DAb24a159341c0509bB36B833E7fdd0a132 is an address labeled as ‘Justin Sun 4’ on Etherscan. The address holds over 1,000 ether (ETH) worth more than $4 million, as well as over $50 million each of wrapped staked ether (wstETH) and staked USDT (STUSDT).

It regularly interacts with Aave, Sun-owned Poloniex, and Binance and is still regularly used, with the most recent transactions happening less than a week ago.

0x3ddfa8ec3052539b6c9549f12cea2c295cff5296 is an address labeled ‘Justin Sun’ on Etherscan that has over $1 million worth of ETH as well as significant positions on Aave. It has interacted with Binance, Poloniex, and Uniswap and has sent over 566,000 ETH to the previously mentioned 0x176F3DAb24a159341c0509bB36B833E7fdd0a132.

0x611f97d450042418e7338cbdd19202711563df01 is an address labeled as ‘Justin Sun 3’ on Etherscan and has very few assets still in it; the majority of the remaining assets were withdrawn near the end of last year. This address, like many Sun addresses, interacted with HTX, Binance, Poloniex, and a variety of smart contracts.

0x621fe33ccf74038db90b18365cb450d677d4b3d8 or ‘Justin Sun 2’ was drained of its remaining assets about a year ago. It previously held massive quantities of staked ether (stETH) and withdrew funds from Sun-owned Poloniex.

An additional address believed to be Sun that we identified using Breadcrumbs seems to have been abandoned earlier this year, with most remaining assets moved out in February. This address interacts with both Binance and Kraken.

Tron

Sun is the founder of the Tron blockchain and has his hands in many of the protocols and projects spread across it.

As part of our previous reporting on Sun’s relationship with Tether, we were able to identify several addresses that were controlled by him. However, most of those addresses are abandoned at this point, nearly entirely drained of assets and no longer regularly used to transact.

It’s possible to observe millions of the USDT issued by Sun flowing to an address labeled as Binance by Breadcrumbs. Another address, which was abandoned in 2023, also interacted with then Huobi, now HTX, a Sun-affiliated exchange.

There is one address that we were able to identify from the Tether Papers investigation that’s more recently used, holding nearly 24 million TRON (TRX) worth nearly $3 million. This address hasn’t been used in several months but has seen activity this year, and a closer review of its counterparties on Breadcrumbs reveals that it transacts with both Kraken and Binance.


A sample of some Tron transactions from Sun addresses, created using Breadcrumbs.

Read more: Justin Sun’s empire crumbles as USDD depegs again

TT2T17KZhoDu47i2E4FWxfG79zdkEWkU9N is an address that many folks believe is Sun. It’s an important redeemer of TrueUSD, a stablecoin deeply connected to Sun. Arkham Intelligence also lists this address as one of its ‘AI-identified potential Sun addresses.’ This address currently holds over 1 billion TRX worth over $138 million.

It also holds a variety of other assets closely connected to Sun including over $225 million worth of USD Coin (USDD), over $60 million worth of TrueUSD, over $50 million worth of BitTorrent, $20 million SUN, over $5 million USDT, and over $40 million of JUST stablecoin (USDJ).

It interacts with entities across the crypto ecosystem including Binance, KuCoin, Bitfinex, Gate, JustLend, HTX, and SunSwap.

In total, these addresses, which likely only represent a portion of Sun’s activities on Tron, contain nearly a billion dollars worth of assets.

Bitcoin

Protos had previously identified one of Sun’s bitcoin (BTC) addresses that he issued USDT to. This address has not been used in over four years and has no meaningful assets in it.

Earlier reporting has suggested that Sun has stored a significant portion of his BTC at Valkyrie Investments, where in 2022 it was reported that he had stashed approximately $580 million worth there, at the time representing over 90% of the assets at Valkyrie Digital Assets LLC.

Sun also has a variety of connections to Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) on Tron, a Poloniex-offered product that accounts for massive portions of the reserves at HTX, despite the fact that it will not disclose where it stores the backing assets.

Recently, Poloniex delisted this asset, making it unclear if anyone can possibly redeem it, a troubling aspect considering the solvency of two exchanges that depend on this product.

Other Justin Sun Projects

Many other projects linked with Sun also have strange connections or massive problems.

USDD, the algorithmic stablecoin (that lacks a true algorithm) founded by Sun stores its collateral at Sun-affiliated HTX, including it in the calculation of HTX’s proof-of-reserves.

TrueUSD, a stablecoin where Sun is a partner market maker (and likely more), recently has seen its market cap collapse as one of its banks was forced into bankruptcy.

stUSDT, which Sun often interacts with, is stored almost entirely in wallets or entities that he’s believed to control or influence.

The Sun-owned cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex had previously stated that it would demonstrate a ‘proof-of-reserves’ before ostensibly breaking that promise.

HTX, formerly Huobi, the Sun-affiliated exchange, relies on both stUSDT and WBTC on Tron to maintain its reserves, both assets with problematic issues tied directly to Sun.

These problems together present a picture of a man desperately flinging money around while hoping the ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit that alleges he engaged in market manipulation and wash-trading disappears.

protos.com