Justin Sun Accuses Stablecoin Issuer of Embezzling $500 Million
TRON founder Justin Sun has intensified his allegations against First Digital Trust (FDT), accusing the issuer of the FDUSD stablecoin of embezzling $500 million from client funds.
In a recent post on social media platform X, Sun compared FDT’s actions to those of the collapsed FTX exchange, but claimed that FDT’s misconduct is “ten times worse.”
He argued that unlike FTX, which at least structured its misuse of funds as pledged loans, FDT allegedly siphoned off nearly $456 million from TUSD custodial funds without authorization, channeling it to a questionable third-party company in Dubai with no collateral backing.
Sun criticized FDT’s practices, stating that while FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) misused client assets, a portion of those funds went into legitimate investments, including companies like Robinhood and Anthropic.
In contrast, Sun claims FDT redirected assets purely for private gain, lacking any meaningful investment strategy. He also condemned FDT CEO Vincent Chok Zhuo for allegedly downplaying the situation and not taking responsibility, contrasting this with SBF’s eventual cooperation with authorities.
Sun urged Hong Kong regulators to take decisive action similar to the US response during the FTX collapse, warning that the region’s reputation as a financial center could be at stake. To pressure for accountability, Sun has launched a $50 million bounty program to encourage whistleblowers and has met with Hong Kong lawmaker Johnny Wu to discuss potential regulatory measures.
According to Sun, swift action is necessary to protect the public and maintain trust in the financial ecosystem, as he continues to rally for more scrutiny on FDT’s activities.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
