Trump Just Got $18 Million From A Chinese Crypto Scammer, But LOOK, BANANA!!
Let the new age of grifting begin!
Did you read our previous stories on a certain family’s can’t-be-sold-in-the-US crypto-token money grab and wonder to yourself, hey, which foreign nationals are going to use this to skirt rules and pass some cash along to the crime-family coffers?
Well, wonder no more. First past the post is Chinese crypto entrepreneur Yuchen “Justin” Sun! If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Sun just purchased Maurizio Cattelan’s $6.2 million conceptual art piece of a banana taped to the wall, and conspicuously consumed it at a press conference in Hong Kong, gleefully exclaiming, “It tastes much better than other bananas. Indeed, quite good. [...] I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture.”
Now Sun’s taken his place in history for another less-conceptual cash-dropping experience, buying $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial. Before Sun’s purchase, the tokens were selling like a wet beer fart, because they are as close to worthless as anything can get. They can’t be transferred, and “investors” can’t even take their “investment” back out. The white paper, we mean GOLD PAPER, is one long disclaimer that boils down to “we’re just gonna take your money, dummy.”
They are “non-transferable and locked indefinitely in a wallet or smart contract until such time, if ever, [WLF tokens] are unlocked through protocol governance procedures in a fashion that does not contravene applicable law."
The marks do get voting shares to make “governance decisions,” but with no investing and the Trump family controlling the majority of the shares, well, you do the math on what that’s worth. It rhymes with stack spit! At the launch, Big Boss did not seem to know what his product was supposed to be either, rambling incoherently, “It’s crypto, it’s AI, it’s some of the other things, you know, AI, speaking of an interesting future, it needs tremendous energy capability, beyond anything I’ve ever heard…” (Crypto and AI are two different things, and the token has nothing to do with AI.)
And now Sun has bought $30 million “worth” of them, which just happens to be the reserve amount the company said it would hold to cover expenses. Then after the $30 million mark is met, DT Marks DEFI LLC, will receive “75% of the net protocol revenues as defined in the services agreement.” And now there have been $24 million of tokens sold beyond that, which equals $18 million straight into Poppy’s sock drawer. Sun has also joined WLF as an advisor, putting him into business with the man and his shady pickup-artist and crypto-grifting partners.
As it turns out, Sun is a little bit of an accused crypto-scammer himself, can you even believe it? The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently prosecuting him for fraud, hide your surprise! In March of 2023 he was charged with unregistered offer and sale of the crypto asset securities Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) and for “manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading, which involves the simultaneous or near-simultaneous purchase and sale of a security to make it appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership, and for orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities to tout TRX and BTT without disclosing their compensation.”
Said celebrities were Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Soulja Boy (née DeAndre Cortez Way), Austin Mahone (maybe the kids have heard of him?), Kendra Lust (aka Michele Mason, an actress in films for grownups), Lil Yachty (née Miles Parks McCollum), Ne-Yo (Shaffer Smith), and Akon (Aliaune Thiam), who all plugged the crypto on their Xitter feeds, with scripts that Sun’s companies gave them. They collectively paid $400,000 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties to settle the charges. LOL, Lohan was paid $10,000 in actual money, but dumbshit Paul took his fee in crypto token magic beans. (BTW does anyone else think his fight with Mike Tyson was fixed? Why else did Tyson not uppercut him in his wienerdick beard when he had the chance? Ugh, that whole spectacle was so depressing.)
Tweeted Austin Mahone, “When $TRX hits 50 cents and $BTT hits 1 cent I’m getting a tattoo of @justinsuntron’s face.”
Alas, that face tattoo was never to be. But more goodies are surely in store for Sun and other cryptobros! The current SEC Chairman, Gary Gensler, will step down in January. And it could be, haha, JK, CERTAINLY WILL BE, that he’ll be replaced by somebody more understanding towards the plight of Sun and all the other misunderstood crypto peddlers and the C-list celebrities who love them.
And you’d think the media would be all over this story, but no, they are too distracted by his starving-for-attention purchase of that duct-taped banana. Noted Judd Legum over at Popular Information,
The New York Times, for example, has published five articles about Sun's purchase of the banana but none about Sun's $30 million purchase of WLF tokens and his business partnership with Trump. The Washington Post has published three articles about the banana, but its coverage of Sun's purchase of WLF tokens was limited to one short paragraph in a larger editorial about the crypto industry. (The paragraph does not explain how Trump personally profits from Sun's token purchase.) The Wall Street Journal did publish a short piece about Sun's token purchase on its “Live Update” blog, but the piece was not viewed as significant enough to be included in the print edition. The paper published two articles, plus a video, focused on the banana. One of the Wall Street Journal articles about the banana was published on the front page of the paper.
To their credit, Bloomberg did notice that the past-and-future president pumping a scammy scheme to enrich himself directly from foreign investors whose money would be untraceable unless they bragged very loudly about it on the Internet is notable news. But everybody else, like a bunch of minions in that annoying-as-shit cartoon, hey, look over there, BANANA!
Man, remember when That Man violated the Emoluments Clauses the first time with his hotel at the old Post Office? And then all the other million times he used the office to enrich himself, from selling the Secret Service overpriced bottled water to hosting the bonesawing Saudi LIV golf tournament at his tacky resort? Gee, would’ve been nice if the Supreme Court had done something about it way back then, but that ship has sure sailed now, baby! We are living in bananas times!
[Popular Information/ Bloomberg archive link]
We are living in banana Republican times.
Yeah, that’s bad. Gonna be a lot of that.
Meanwhile Marcy Jones at Emptywheel has been doing some awesome work trying to get msm to pay attention to what is actually happening regarding Hunter.
She alone did great coverage of the right wing persecution rather than parrot right wing lies about Hunter.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/12/03/how-jeff-bezos-smothered-pete-hegseth-news-because-hunter-biden-was-pardoned-of-already-declined-charges/