The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has said that the founder of Tron, Justin Sun, might be subject to legal action.
In a recently updated document, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission explained why it was looking closely at Sun. They said Sun’s long stay in the US between 2017 and 2019 could lead to legal effects.
The updated lawsuit says Sun spent over 380 days in several U.S. cities, such as New York, Boston, and San Francisco. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says that these trips and claims that wash trading was used to manipulate the secondary market for TRX may be enough to warrant government action.
During Sun’s business trips to the United States in 2019, he spent time in various cities, including New York City, Boston, Massachusetts, and San Francisco. Rainberry also rented an apartment where Sun stayed during some of his business trips to the United States in 2019.
SEC statement
Sun’s alleged work trips happen simultaneously as major legal claims. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says that business owners like Sun, who ran companies, intentionally did things that might have been against securities laws in the US.
SEC’s Initial Lawsuit and Bittrex’s Involvement
In its first case, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission focused on “wash trading” claims of TRX tokens and involved an unnamed platform. But the Commission’s new statement clarifies that the Bittrex exchange was involved in the alleged wrongdoing.
According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Sun worked directly with Bittrex’s team to list TRX tokens in 2018 and signed several papers about the company’s qualities.
In addition, the Exchange stresses Bittrex’s ties to the United States, strengthening the agency’s control over offenders. In August 2023, Bittrex and its CEO agreed to pay the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission $24 million to settle their claims. Before this deal, Bittrex tried to argue that the Exchange didn’t have authority over cryptocurrencies but failed.
In March 2023, the Exchange took further legal action against Sun and three companies connected to him. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that Sun and these companies were selling securities in the form of Tron and BitTorrent tokens without being listed.
The fact that possible legal grounds were found against Justin Sun shows that the SEC is still working to control the cryptocurrency space and ensure that securities laws are followed. This means that well-known people and platforms in the industry will be looked at more closely.
