protos.com
Former Binance chief Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and Tron founder Justin Sun have long maintained a well-documented bromance, lending frequent support to one another’s careers (and tokens). But with CZ currently in Seattle pleading guilty to various crimes and Binance agreeing to pay one of the largest fines in the history of finance, Sun’s behavior this week is curious at best.
Rumors are circulating that he might be in the process of his final exit while many wallets associated with him are involved in suspicious hacks. Indeed, blockchain observers are asking questions about mysterious, ongoing withdrawals of tens of millions of dollars worth of digital assets from Sun-championed services.
On November 10, someone stole approximately $114 million from Poloniex, which Sun recently purchased. A day earlier, Binance moved 3.9 billion USDT on Tron from its cold to hot wallets. Sun promised a $10 million bounty to the Poloniex hacker if they returned the funds by Friday, November 25. So far, no luck.
Not only that, today the operator of the Sun-championed HECO bridge withdrew over $86 million. Some people believe Sun directed those transfers and regardless of whether or not the act is nefarious, many are speculating that he’s directing assets to be liquidated into ETH and/or USDC.
Seems like HECO bridge was drained.
— DeFiac (@TheDEFIac) November 22, 2023
Onchain movements seem similar to the Poloniex exploiter, imo nontrivial chance this is the same entity.
– Transfer funds out of the bridge to one wallet
– Transfer each coin to a new wallet
– Swap coins for ETH on dex's.
In addition, for some reason, Tether has minted 1 billion USDT on Tron the day after his frequent ally CZ pleaded guilty to a litany of US crimes. Incidentally, an extra billion dollars will support liquidity on Sun’s blockchain.
Protos has been unable to verify that Sun is responsible for any of these hacks but on X (formerly Twitter), speculation is rampant.
Alongside this suspicious activity, and despite being in the midst of the collapse of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Sun is posting tone-deaf pre-recorded, AI-modified, YouTube videos.
Read more: Justin Sun in no hurry to tell China about HTX hack
Probably not the best use of his time, given that he’s currently defending himself in a major Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit. Commissioners allege that he and his companies Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation, and Rainberry sold TRX and BTT tokens in illegal, unregistered securities offerings.
The SEC also alleges that Sun directed extensive wash trading of both tokens to make them appear more legitimate and desirable.