Thoughts

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Justin Sun v. Bloomberg

Justin Sun has just filed a lawsuit against Bloomberg, claiming they plan to “recklessly and improperly disclos[e] his highly confidential, sensitive, private, and proprietary financial information,” which he gave to them while they were verifying his assets for inclusion in the Bloomberg “Billionaires Index”.

Sun claims this will cause him “significant and irreparable harm—both financially and physically.” He says they plan to use the information in an article unrelated to the Billionaires Index. He also claims they plan to publish “granular details about his cryptocurrency assets, including a breakdown of his cryptocurrency holdings,” in the Billionaires Index, and that he wouldn’t have agreed to share the information had he known.

Sun sent a cease and desist to Bloomberg, and was informed they still intend to publish. He now seeks an injunction against the company.

The “agreement” Justin Sun says should prevent Bloomberg from publishing the amounts and types of crypto assets he holds seems extremely shaky to me (caveat: I’m not a lawyer, some images are missing).

It looks like Justin Sun and his team sent the information he now claims is confidential on or around February 28.

A month later, on March 27, Justin Sun posted terms including: “The data is solely for verification and may not be used for any other purpose (including reporting) ... Bloomberg must also agree to use the data strictly in accordance with our requirements — for example, to provide only a general assessment or overall valuation based on the data, without making any specific references or detailed reporting on the figures.”

Bloomberg’s Tom Maloney: “Nobody at Bloomberg agreed to the terms sent by Justin, weeks after the data was shared with us.”

Bloomberg says they will oppose a temporary restraining order, but also that a TRO is moot because Bloomberg already published.

It seems Sun is objecting to VERY rough estimates of his crypto holdings (~60 billion TRX, heavily discounted; 17k BTC; 224K ETH; 700K Tether).

Confidence rating: 1 star The majority of Sun's net worth comes from cryptocurrency he owns. Sun owns more than 60 billion Tronix (also referred to as TRON or TRX), the cryptocurrency native to Tron, according to an analysis of financial information provided by representatives of Sun in February 2025. A 75% liquidity discount is applied to the value of the token because Sun controls the majority of its supply. Tron has more than 300 million user accounts as of June 2025, according to the Tronscan website. Sun also owns about 17,000 Bitcoin, 224,000 Ether, and 700,000 Tether, according to the same analysis. No discount is applied to these because his holdings represent less than 1% of the total supply. The analysis only includes tokens that are on-chain. Tokens that are held on exchanges such as HTX and Binance are not included in the analysis because the holdings could not be verified. Sun owns the cryptocurrency exchange HTX. It's calculated to have had revenue of about $1.3 billion in 2024, based on its spot and derivative trading volumes and fee schedules. It's valued using the average price-to-sales multiple of Coinbase Global Inc., Galaxy Digital Inc. and Riot Platforms Inc. Sun is credited with about 90% of the company, based on information provided by his representatives in May 2025. A 50% liquidity discount is applied. Confidence rating: 1 star The majority of Sun's net worth comes from cryptocurrency he owns. Sun owns more than 60 billion Tronix (also referred to as TRON or TRX), the cryptocurrency native to Tron, according to an analysis of financial information provided by representatives of Sun in February 2025. A 75% liquidity discount is applied to the value of the token because Sun controls the majority of its supply. Tron has more than 300 million user accounts as of June 2025, according to the Tronscan website. Sun also owns about 17,000 Bitcoin, 224,000 Ether, and 700,000 Tether, according to the same analysis. No discount is applied to these because his holdings represent less than 1% of the total supply. The analysis only includes tokens that are on-chain. Tokens that are held on exchanges such as HTX and Binance are not included in the analysis because the holdings could not be verified. Sun owns the cryptocurrency exchange HTX. It's calculated to have had revenue of about $1.3 billion in 2024, based on its spot and derivative trading volumes and fee schedules. It's valued using the average price-to-sales multiple of Coinbase Global Inc., Galaxy Digital Inc. and Riot Platforms Inc. Sun is credited with about 90% of the company, based on information provided by his representatives in May 2025. A 50% liquidity discount is applied.

My guess is that his fury here is at the revelation that he controls 60 billion TRX (63% of the total supply, and it’s not clear to what extent they’re counting TRX held by companies he owns). It’s always been known he owns a lot, but estimates I’ve seen are lower than that.

The other explanations that I’ve brainstormed don’t really make sense. The estimates likely aren’t specific enough to be identifying, as he claims. And I doubt it’s an ego thing at having his net worth shown to be lower than he wants — Bloomberg puts him at $12.4B, higher than Forbes’ $8.5B. (Though maybe he wants them to say his 60B TRX are worth $21.6B, idk)

Kevin de Patoul, chief executive of crypto market maker Keyrock, says investors should be realistic about what this is. “You’re injecting a huge amount of risk into a system that, in the end, has almost nothing backing it except the continued appreciation of the asset.”
Screenshot of I Think You Should Leave episode, where the focus group man states “Oh my God, he admit it!”
“Why struggling companies are loading up on bitcoin”.
Nikou Asgari in Financial Times.
“My main problem with this strategy is that I don’t really understand where it ends,” adds Benoist. “The company is in a loop where it has to continually feed that loop with additional purchases, go back to the market to purchase more — this cycle has to continue to justify the premium.” The biggest risk is how deep the damage will be if — or when — the price of crypto collapses. Inevitably, a crypto downturn means companies whose share prices are linked to tokens will slide too.  Those that have raised debt face greater risks as they will need to pay interest to investors, and may be forced to raise more money or then sell their crypto holdings in order to meet debt obligations.  “Structurally this is very unhealthy if you’re paying your existing debt by raising other debt. That makes me very uneasy,” says the head of a crypto hedge fund, adding: “You may end up with systemic risk as there are too many of these weak structures which have to unwind fully or partially, and that creates pressure on the market.

Not drowning in the RSS firehose

In ShopTalk, Chris and Dave talked about my recent post about RSS, and the curation challenge posed by RSS when you mix together high-volume feeds like The Verge with more infrequent posters (solo bloggers, etc).

This is partly why I have a "news" feed that's separate from my "newsletters" feed in my blogroll: the "news" feed is typically for high-volume outlets with multiple writers who publish multiple times a day, whereas newsletters tend to be solo or small groups of writers publishing ~weekly.

By separating them, I avoid ~weekly posters getting drowned out in a firehose of more frequent news. It's a little more up-front curation, but it works well!

August 7: Stablecoin issuer Paxos reaches $48 million settlement with New York financial regulators over due diligence, anti-money laundering failures

August 11: Paxos applies for national trust bank charter

🙃

Newsletter platform cost comparisons, August 2025 update

I've updated my past newsletter platform cost comparison to incorporate Ghost's recent pricing changes for Ghost Pro. (Note that past Ghost users are grandfathered in.)

Free Substack Ghost Pro Self-hosted Ghost* Beehiiv Buttondown Mailchimp** 10 subscribers $0 $15 $12 $0 $0 $0 50 subscribers $0 $15 $12 $0 $0 $0 100 subscribers $0 $15 $12 $0 $9 $0 250 subscribers $0 $15 $27 $0 $7.50 $0 500 subscribers $0 $15 $27 $0 $7.50 $20 1,000 subscribers $0 $15 $27 $0 $24.17 $45 5,000 subscribers $0 $63 $27 $78 $65.83 $100 10,000 subscribers $0 $88 $27 $96 $115.83 $135 25,000 subscribers $0 $141 $87 $149 $199.17 $310 50,000 subscribers $0 $208 $217 $219 $265.83 $450 100,000 subscribers $0 $274 $412 $290 - $800 7% paid @ $5/mo Substack Ghost Pro Self-hosted Ghost* Beehiiv Buttondown Mailchimp** 10 subscribers (1 paid) $0.50 $29 $12 $43 $7.50 $0 50 subscribers (4 paid) $2 $29 $12 $43 $7.50 $0 100 subscribers (7 paid) $3.50 $29 $12 $43 $7.50 $0 250 subscribers (18 paid) $9 $29 $12 $43 $7.50 $0 500 subscribers (35 paid) $17.50 $29 $27 $43 $7.50 $20 1,000 subscribers (70 paid) $35 $29 $27 $43 $24.17 $45 5,000 subscribers (350 paid) $175 $63 $27 $78 $65.83 $100 10,000 subscribers (700 paid) $350 $88 $27 $96 $115.83 $135 25,000 subscribers (1,750 paid) $875 $141 $87 $149 $199.17 $310 50,000 subscribers (3,500 paid) $1,750 $208 $217 $219 $265.83 $450 100,000 subscribers (7,000 paid) $3,500 $274 $412 $290 - $800 * Assuming $12 hosting fees, but you can get this number down lower. Assumes ~weekly email sending. ** There may be additional fees to monetize MailChimp newsletters since it’s not built-in. This also assumes ~weekly email sending. Flat fees are calculated based on cheapest plans, but ignoring introductory offers. Also calculated based on annual billing, if month-to-month amounts differ. All of these options have an additional payment processor fee for paid subscriptions (usually $0.30 + 2.9% for each transaction), but those fees vary based on factors including payment method/location/etc and so are challenging to accurately estimate. These fees are not reflected in this chart, but should be roughly equivalent regardless of platform choice.