Justin Sun reignites feud with HTC co-founder
Tron founder Justin Sun has rekindled a years-long feud with HTX co-founder Leon Li, by accusing Li of fraud.
In an X post, Sun alleged Li concealed critical due diligence materials during the sale of HTX, previously known as Huobi, leaving a $30 million hole in the exchange’s balance sheet. Sun claimed that he personally lent $30 million to cover the shortfall but the money has yet to be repaid.
Li hasn’t denied the $30 million gap but disputes Sun’s version of events, in a statement reportedly distributed by his inner circle. Instead, he attributes the missing funds to margin calls triggered by the exchange’s high-risk leverage trading operations.
Huobi was acquired by Hong Kong-based About Capital Management in October 2022. Sun has denied being the real buyer behind the curtains despite widespread skepticism. He is listed as an “adviser” to the exchange, and often acts as the public face of the brand to promote and announce key business developments.
The public spat between the two crypto businessmen has been escalating for some time. In 2023, Sun accused Li’s brother, Wei Li, of illegally acquiring millions of Huobi’s native tokens at zero cost. Li fired back, calling for HTX to provide evidence and vowing to repay ten times the amount if wrongdoing was proven.
The feud reignited on Feb. 4 courtesy of Sun’s X post promoting the launch of the second version of his USDD stablecoin and its 20% annual yield. Sun provoked Li in the post by claiming that he guarantees the yield payments to anyone, even Li.
USDD is an algorithmic stablecoin that has been controversial. It debuted in May 2022 in the wake of Terra’s catastrophic UST collapse, which wiped out tens of billions of crypto investors’ funds. Like UST, USDD is an algorithmic stablecoin and was initially designed around an arbitrage mechanism using Tron’s TRX token, though it…
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