Sun Yuchen, known in the cryptocurrency world as 'Sun Cut', made his fortune through virtual currency, employing ruthless tactics, and many global investors have fallen victim to him. However, this time, he actually fell into the hands of the Trump family, with $74 million in tokens frozen at a moment's notice, and he had to fork out $20 million for 'security', making this plot almost surreal, especially since Sun Yuchen was previously invited to a dinner with the Trump family.
$WLFI project is the Trump family's 'new venture', having previously promoted a cryptocurrency named after the Trump couple. This time they want to create a big wave, issuing 100 billion WLFI tokens. Sun Yuchen invested $75 million in two rounds in October 2024 and January 2025, buying nearly 3 billion tokens at a cost of about $0.025 per token, while the Trump family holds 22.5 billion tokens, taking the majority.
On September 1, 2025, WLFI coin was listed on the exchange, opening at $0.2, soaring to $0.38, with an increase of over 90%. The issuer declared, 'We won't sell unless it's over $1', stabilizing a wave of investors. However, it didn't last long, with the price collapsing back to $0.2 in 8 hours, and on September 4, it directly broke the issue price, leaving retail investors bewildered; this is not investment, it is clearly a 'pig killing plate'!
The SEC immediately focused on it, specifically investigating foreign company securities fraud, directly targeting project violations. The issuer countered by accusing Sun Yuchen of 'manipulating the market', first publicly promoting stability in price, and then transferring 50 million tokens to its own exchange HTX; next, it pushed a 20% annualized deposit product, deceiving retail investors into depositing; then, through multiple addresses, it transferred the retail investors' coins to other exchanges for cashing out; finally, it used its own coins to pay users.
This 'flower moving' trick is played smoothly; on the surface, there was no sell-off, but secretly selling goods made a huge profit, with a cost of 0.025, an issuance price of 0.2 that flipped 8 times, and a high point of 0.4 that could flip 16 times. Even deducting 20% of the financial management cost, the cost was still less than 0.03, a blood profit!
But how could the Trump family suffer this loss? They directly froze the 2.95 billion tokens that Sun Yuchen did not transfer, valued at $74 million based on cost. To cope with the SEC and protect the project, Sun Yuchen was forced to add an investment of $20 million: $10 million to support WLFI, and $10 million to buy stocks of the issuer's parent company, instantly transforming from 'harvester' to 'harvested'.
This incident thoroughly exposed the regulatory loopholes and power games in the cryptocurrency circle. The SEC can investigate, but cross-border capital and decentralized characteristics make the investigation increasingly difficult. What's worse is that when capital players encounter political families, no matter how sophisticated their tactics are, they have to kneel. After all, there are already lessons learned; Musk and Trump's 'love-hate' relationship has long been clarified.
This time, Sun Yuchen 'failed to cut others and ended up being cut himself'; no matter how skilled the operator's methods are, they cannot withstand the direct freezing of assets by political forces. The Trump family has safeguarded their interests through regulation and power, proving that in the cryptocurrency circle, political capital is the ultimate 'scythe'. Is this wave due to Sun Yuchen's greed or the Trump family's ruthlessness?
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