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Justin Sun Incites SEC With Tron Shilling After Suffering USD 8m GameStop Loss

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Simon Chandler

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Simon Chandler

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Simon Chandler is a Brighton-based writer and journalist with over ten years of experience writing about crypto, technology, politics and culture. He has written for Cryptonews.com since late 2017,...

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Last updated:

June 26, 2023

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Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun has been up to his old tricks again, seemingly paying American celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and Ne-Yo to shill TRX and related tokens on Twitter. His latest promotional activities come after the crypto entrepreneur admitted to losing USD 8m on GameStop shares.

Justin Sun. Source: Twitter, @justinsuntron

Observers on Twitter have suggested that Sun’s latest promotional gambit may backfire, potentially leading the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to charge him with inducing celebrities to break US securities law.

This possibility doesn’t seem to have deterred Sun, however, who has continued to tweet relentlessly about Tron.

Lost millions and discovered celebrities

Sun doesn’t let a defeat keep him down. This week he told Bloomberg that he’d invested USD 10m in GameStop shares, which are now worth only USD 2m.

This loss apparently did little to dissuade him from his belief that the GameStop saga represents a fundamental shift in how markets behave and traders/investors make decisions.

“Even if I lose money on the GME stock, I still believe this is a paradigm shift. In the past, we all followed the advice from the financial analysts, and these days people are going to make their own decisions,” he was quoted as saying.

By “their own decisions,” Sun possibly means decisions on the basis of tweets from celebrities (who are sometimes beeing paid to say things). Because not long after Sun spoke with Bloomberg, a hodgepodge of random celebrities began tweeting about TRX.

First, it was actress, singer Lindsay ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ Lohan, who has been ‘exploring’ DeFi recently.

Next up was singer-songwriter Ne-Yo, who said that the likes of TRX, SUN, and JST are ‘ideal crypto bags.’

If this weren’t already enough, pornographic actress and director Kendra Lust, implored her 1.2 million Twitter followers to use Tron because it’s “fast” and “cheap”.

Repercussions?

More experienced crypto types weren’t entirely impressed by this promotional offensive. Popular crypto commentator/trader CryptoCobain summed up the general mood in a reply to Sun himself.

More seriously, US-based attorney Collins Belton, has suggested that Justin Sun is lining himself up for serious trouble from the SEC, which has shown it’s no stranger to litigation with players in the cryptoverse.

And he was not alone:

Tron is in fact already facing a class-action lawsuit in New York, where law firms Roche Cyrulnik Freedman and Selendy & Gay allege that it (along with other companies) have sold billions of dollars in unregistered securities.

Moreover, as reported, two members of the American Congressional Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have challenged the decentralized blockchain-powered DLive platform, that was acquired by Sun, to explain why it was hosting “extremist” content that incited Donald Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building early last month, and allowing streamers to earn crypto while doing so.

These challenges, along with the possibility of future SEC action, has done little to unnerve Justin Sun. He has continued to reply to the mockery and skepticism his latest shilling has inspired.

Meanwhile, at the time of writing (12:01 PM UTC), TRX, ranked 20th by market capitalization, trades at USD 0.0546 and is up by 16% in a day and 64% in a week. It rallied by 90% in a month and 140% in a year.

TRX price chart: