Alleged Justin Sun insider claims TRX was manipulated on Binance as SEC wash‑trade charges and WLFI’s TRON‑linked footprint raise fresh regulatory questions.
Summary
- Journalist Zeng Ying, claiming close ties to Justin Sun, alleges coordinated TRX buying and selling via multiple Binance employee accounts to pump price, then dump on retail.
- Her claims surface against an SEC case accusing Sun of 600k+ TRX wash trades and unregistered offerings, deepening scrutiny of TRON’s early market structure.
- TRX and WLFI prices remain relatively stable so far, but any U.S. follow‑up on Zeng’s promised evidence could pressure TRON‑linked DEFI ecosystems.
Allegations around TRON’s (TRX) early trading are resurfacing—this time from inside Justin Sun’s personal orbit.
Core allegations and who is speaking
In a series of posts on Jan. 31, 2026, Chinese financial journalist and entrepreneur Zeng Ying claimed she “was close to Justin Sun during TRON’s early days” and now “has evidence of market manipulation on Binance.”
Zeng, a Forbes “30 Under 30” alum who studied finance at Waseda University and previously hosted TV in Japan, has a long track record as a crypto blogger; her Weibo account was later banned, and she has spoken openly about “serious mental health problems” and depression dating back to 2018.
What she claims Justin Sun did
Zeng alleges that Sun “used multiple employee identities and phones to open many Binance accounts” and that these accounts “coordinated buying and selling of TRX,” pushing prices up before “TRX was then dumped on retail investors,” generating “massive illegal profits.” She says she holds “WeChat chat records, employee testimony, [and] internal evidence,” and has publicly invited U.S. regulators to contact her, stating she is “willing to cooperate with the SEC.”
Zeng also claims she was Sun’s girlfriend during TRON’s early period, but admits no documentary proof has yet surfaced; as the original thread notes, “no evidence places her inside TRON operations in 2017–2018 for now” and current coverage relies on “gossip articles” labeling her an “ex-girlfriend” without substantiation.
For his part, Sun recently posted on X: “keeping building,” though has not issued a formal denunciation of the newest allegations.
In response, Zeng is being courted by the investigative vlogger Coffeezilla, presumably for an on camera tell all.
Regulatory backdrop: SEC vs. Sun
Her narrative intersects awkwardly with an existing U.S. enforcement record. In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun and several entities with “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading,” alleging “more than 600,000 wash trades of TRX between two crypto asset trading platform accounts he controlled.” The agency said this campaign created “the misleading appearance of active trading in TRX” while Sun “generated millions in illegal proceeds at the expense of investors.” That case, initiated in 2023 and paused in 2025, did not include the employee-identity scheme Zeng now describes, but it laid a factual foundation: U.S. regulators already believe TRX’s early market had been structurally manipulated.
Market impact: TRX and WLFI
So far, markets are taking the latest claims in stride. TRON is trading around $0.28, down less than 1% over the last 24 hours, with Binance quoting 1 TRX at roughly $0.2839. Broader benchmarks are also under pressure: Bitcoin changes hands near $75,000–$76,000, down roughly 4–5% on the day, while Ethereum trades around $2,230–$2,290 after a roughly 5–9% 24‑hour slide.
The World Liberty Financial token (WLFI), closely associated with a stablecoin-centric DeFi ecosystem whose backers include Tron-linked capital, is trading near $0.12–$0.15, with Binance listing WLFI at about $0.1259 on a 24‑hour volume of roughly $271 million and a stated market cap of $3.37 billion. That scale—combined with earlier fundraising rounds totaling an estimated $715 million across public and private sales—underlines how deeply TRON-affiliated projects are now embedded in DeFi capital flows.
For now, there is “no evidence [that] proves manipulation” beyond Zeng’s testimony, “no proof [that] confirms the relationship,” and no public response from Justin Sun, TRON DAO, or Binance. The real test for TRX and WLFI will come if U.S. regulators decide Zeng’s promised evidence merits formal discovery—turning a volatile Twitter thread into the next chapter of an already sprawling enforcement saga.
