Sun taking TRON public in US, Trump family denies involvement
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Justin Sun is taking his TRON blockchain public in the U.S., while growing ties to the Trump family could complicate passage of U.S. stablecoin legislation.
On June 16, the Financial Times broke the news that the TRON blockchain, founded by Justin Sun, plans to go public on the Nasdaq via a reverse merger with SRM Entertainment, a struggling theme-park merchandise supplier.
The report was quickly confirmed by SRM, which announced that it had reached a deal with 'a private investor' who will take a $100 million equity investment in SRM. As a result, SRM will rebrand as Tron Inc and Sun (aka the 'investor') has been named an advisor to the new entity.
The deal will also see SRM issue 100,000 new shares of its Series B Convertible Preferred Stock, which will be convertible to 200 million shares of SRM's common stock. There will also be 220 million warrants to acquire common shares at $0.50 apiece, bringing the total investment to $210 million.
SRM plans to use the funds to 'initiate a TRON Token (TRX) Treasury Strategy.' Like many of the firms that have launched 'treasury' strategies in recent months, SRM was a loss-making company with little hope of pulling out of its financial spiral. In April, SRM was granted a six-month reprieve of Nasdaq's October 2024 threat to delist the stock due to its inability to stay above the $1 minimum bid price.
News of the Sun deal appears to have leaked late last week, as SRM's share price—which had been mired around $0.60 for most of June—more than doubled by June 13. The shares closed Monday around $9.19, a modest 534% rise for the day.
The deal was brokered by Dominari Securities, a Nasdaq-listed firm with a colorful history that's based out of Trump Tower in Manhattan and added President Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., to its list of advisors in February. Dominari's share price, which was struggling to stay above $1 at the time, shot up over $12. Each brother received 750,000 Dominari shares at the time they joined, stakes that are currently worth $3.75 million apiece.
Dominari also supplied the shell company that morphed into the American Bitcoin Corp (ABTC) block reward mining venture the Trumps launched this spring with miner Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT).
The FT reported that Eric Trump was expected to take a role as advisor to Tron Inc. but Eric tweeted Monday that 'I'm the biggest fan of Tron and love @justinsuntron – he is a great friend and an icon in the crypto space. That said the [FT's claim] is inaccurate – I don't have public involvement.' (The word 'public' may be doing some heavy lifting there.)
Regardless, Sun continues to deepen his ties to the Trump family's crypto ventures, which started last year with Sun buying $75 million worth of WLFI, the governance token of the Trump-controlled decentralized finance (DeFi) project World Liberty Financial (WLF). WLF subsequently appointed Sun as an advisor and both Eric and Don Jr. have praised Sun via their personal X accounts.
Sun later bought more than $20 million worth of the $TRUMP memecoin that was issued by the president just days before his inauguration in January. Sun's status as a $TRUMP whale granted him access to last month's gala dinner at a Trump-owned golf course for the top 220 $TRUMP holders.
It wasn't that long ago that Sun didn't dare set foot on U.S. soil, partly because of his legal difficulties with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) but also over concerns that the Department of Justice (DOJ) might be waiting with unsealed criminal charges. But the SEC has since mothballed its civil complaint, and the DOJ is under new management, leaving Sun free to come and go as he pleases.
Following the SRM announcement—but before Eric's denial of having any role in the deal—Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) tweeted that '[t]he crypto industry would have a lot more credibility if they called out growing number of criminals who seem to really like their toys. Including the Trump family.'
A GENIUS move?
Sun was quoted in the SRM release saying 'stablecoins and blockchain are revolutionizing global payments.' SRM CEO Rich Miller praised TRON as 'the industry leader for cross border settlement in US dollar stablecoin.'
For the record, TRON's native token TRX isn't a stablecoin, and while TRON does host the majority ($78.7 billion) of USDT, the market-leading dollar-denominated stablecoin issued by Tether, Sun has not been shy about promoting USD1, the stablecoin launched by Trump's WLF this spring.
TRON recently started to mint USD1, and the Sun-linked HTX (formerly Huobi) became the first digital asset exchange to list USD1 as a trading option in May. USD1's market cap has been stuck around $2.1 billion for a while now, but could that be about to change?
It will be interesting to see whether Sun's new deal might impact Tuesday's Senate floor vote on the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. GENIUS passed some procedural votes with a significant number of Dems joining their Republican colleagues, but the publicity surrounding yet another Sun/Trump tie-up—Eric's denial notwithstanding—could cause some of these pro-crypto Dems to rethink their support when it comes to the final vote. It brings to mind last week's Decrypt article, in which an unidentified crypto lobbyist griped that the Trump family and its crypto venture partners 'hate us. They announce a new product every time there's a key vote' on legislation in Congress.
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Trump's next filing should be a doozy
On June 15, the Financial Times reported on a June 13 filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics detailing the president's 2024 income and assets. The filing lists nearly $57.4 million derived from Trump's WLF revenue, as well as his control of 15.75 billion WLFI (out of a total supply of 100 billion).
Trump earned $1.1 million via the sale of branded non-fungible tokens (NFTs), while Trump's wife, Melania, earned nearly $217,000 from her own NFT collection. The filing also shows Trump holds between $1 million and $5 million in the Ethereum network's native ETH token (likely earned via his four different NFT collections).
The filing only details income/assets from 2024, meaning it lacks WLF contributions from this year. Nor does it include the over $400 million in fees from $TRUMP memecoin sales, contributions from the ABTC mining venture, or the crypto activities of his Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) (NASDAQ: DJT).
Speaking of TMTG, the U.S. SEC gave its stamp of approval last week to the company's 'BTC treasury' strategy, aka raising $2.4 billion to buy BTC and give investors a reason to buy the company's shares. TMTG generates little revenue (less than $1 million in the first quarter of 2025) from its actual business operations, which include the Truth Social platform.
TMTG's long-term plan could see it raise up to $12 billion to fund additional BTC purchases at some future date. But investors seem unimpressed, as TMTG opened Monday's trading at $19.52, less than half its $43 peak in January. The shares continued their downward trajectory on Monday, closing out the day at $18.67 (-4.35%).
On June 16, TMTG filed a new application for a Truth Social Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF (exchange-traded fund). The precise makeup of the new ETF has yet to be determined but 'is initially expected to approximate a three-to-one ratio of the value' of BTC to the value of the ETH it holds.
TMTG previously announced plans to issue multiple crypto-focused ETFs and filed an application with the SEC earlier this month to launch the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF. The tokens in TMTG's ETFs will be custodied by Foris DAX Trust Co, an offshoot of the Crypto.com digital asset exchange.
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Trump campaign 'planted crypto flag' to attract minority voters
At last week's State of Crypto Summit in New York presented by the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) exchange, President Trump sent a pre-recorded video to address those in attendance. To no one's surprise, Trump's talk consisted primarily of listing his efforts to loosen crypto regulations and reminding everyone how much worse off they'd be without him in their corner.
Also appearing at the summit (in person) was Chris LaCivita, who co-managed the president's 2024 election campaign. Coinbase appointed LaCivita to its Global Advisory Council shortly after Trump's inauguration and LaCivita appeared eager to remind Summit attendees of the ties that should bind them to the president's party.
LaCivita also revealed that Republicans decided to 'plant our flag on [the crypto] issue' because it offered 'an opportunity to reach a wider swath of voters, and maybe ones that were a little outside of the, uh, of the Republican, you know, box.'
Republicans have traditionally struggled to make inroads with minority voters, including Black, Hispanic and Asian groups. But these groups report significantly higher rates of digital asset ownership than white voters, offering a possibility for outreach that the GOP was only too eager to exercise.
LaCivita admitted that Republicans 'have waged campaigns that at times have been accused of subtraction' rather than trying to grow their 'tent' beyond their base. Enter crypto, which 'gave us an opportunity to establish common ground with an area and a demographic that we need to expand in in order to be successful.'
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Tanks, no thanks
A couple of days after the Summit, Coinbase was a high-profile sponsor of the president's military parade through the streets of Washington, D.C., with its logo conspicuously displayed behind the president's podium.
Coinbase's involvement in the highly polarizing event didn't go down well with crypto community members who saw this public embrace of state power as antithetical to Bitcoin's individualistic origins. Many also saw CEO Brian Armstrong as hypocritical, given his 2020 op-ed that suggested employees who wish to engage in political advocacy might want to find employment elsewhere.
The Coinbase execs who've publicly defended the sponsorship have argued that the event was celebrating the Army's 250th birthday, not any one politician or party. However, much of the controversy surrounding the parade was because that day was also the president's 79th birthday. So far, Trump has yet to announce any similar celebrations for the Navy or Marine Corps, both of which celebrate their own 250th birthdays this year, just not on his birthday.
Coinbase made a seven-figure contribution to Trump's inauguration committee and has signed on as a 'major sponsor' of America250, the 2026 party for the country's 250th birthday. But the company has repeatedly pointed out that its political efforts are bipartisan and will support politicians of any stripe if they're sufficiently pro-crypto.
However, it's precisely this mercenary approach that seems to have unnerved some crypto supporters, the suggestion that a party or politician's overall policies can be disregarded so long as they continue to advance crypto's cause.
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