As Sam Bankman-Fried serves the second year of his 25-year federal prison sentence, a resurfaced interview with Tron founder Justin Sun is circulating on social media, revisiting the chaotic final hours of the FTX collapse and claiming a “ready to go” liquidity package was thwarted by legal intervention.
Speaking to CNBC in May 2023, Sun reiterated his assertion that he had secured “billions of dollars” in potential aid for the distressed exchange in November 2022. He alleged the deal collapsed not due to a lack of capital, but because bankruptcy counsel seized control of the entity before the transfer could be executed.
“The initial plan we were talking about was at least billions of dollars for a rescue plan,” Sun said in the clip, doubling down on the narrative he first floated during the crisis. “But hours after we talked, he lost control of the exchange… and everything went chaotic.”
The FTX “VIP Life Raft”
Despite the “rescue” framing, the proposal described by Sun was structurally designed to protect the Tron ecosystem rather than the broader market. The plan involved establishing a preferential credit facility that would have allowed holders of Tron-native assets, specifically TRX, BTT, JST, and Huobi Token (HT), to withdraw funds from the frozen platform at a 1:1 ratio.
Legal experts have long noted that such a mechanism would likely have been clawed back by bankruptcy courts as a preferential transfer, effectively functioning as a “VIP exit” for Sun-affiliated tokens while leaving other creditors stranded.
The Survivor and the Inmates
The viral footage highlights the divergent paths of the 2022 crypto titans three years after the contagion. Bankman-Fried remains incarcerated at a medium-security federal facility in California.
Meanwhile, former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison is currently serving the second year of her 24-month sentence at a minimum-security prison in Connecticut, with a projected release date in mid-2026. Conversely, Sun remains active and elusive, operating primarily out of Singapore and Hong Kong.
Legal Stasis
Sun’s continued bravado comes amid a prolonged stalemate with U.S. regulators. While the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Sun and the Tron Foundation in 2023 with wash trading and selling unregistered securities, the case has seen little movement in recent months.
Reports in February 2025 indicated that Sun’s legal team and the SEC had entered preliminary settlement discussions to pause the civil fraud case, though no formal agreement has been announced. Sun continues to deny jurisdiction. “Our business itself does not operate in the United States in any way,” Sun said. “I feel peace since we didn’t do anything wrong.”
Pivot to Memes
With the era of “mega-bailouts” over, Sun has pivoted Tron’s strategy toward the high-velocity meme coin market. He described the shift as a necessary alignment with “web culture,” noting that he will personally bear losses on specific meme token trades to encourage activity on the Tron network.
Chain Street’s Take
Sun’s revisionist history is a masterclass in survivalist PR. He is framing a mercenary attempt to ring-fence his own tokens as a heroic bailout that “lawyers” ruined.
Let’s be clear: A deal to only let TRX holders exit a burning building isn’t a rescue; it’s a VIP life raft. The contrast between Sun’s freedom and SBF’s prison cell highlights the industry’s new reality: The “Titans” who tried to be global banks are gone, while those who stayed offshore and treated the market like a casino are the ones left writing the history books.
