Justin Sun filed a lawsuit against Bloomberg on August 11, alleging that the company intended to disclose “his highly confidential, sensitive, private, and proprietary financial information.”
This dispute is the result of Sun’s previous agreement to participate in the Billionaire Index, a listing of wealthy people compiled by Bloomberg.
In order for Bloomberg to include Sun on this list, journalists requested additional details to allow them to verify his wealth. These details included “as comprehensive a list as you can provide of all wallet addresses controlled by Justin.”
Read more: Justin Sun reveals Poloniex issues prevent proof of reserves
Sun claims he also received verbal reassurance from a Bloomberg journalist that information shared would be kept confidential.
Sun apparently provided these resources, and in a group chat with Bloomberg, tried to unilaterally insist that, “All information shared within the group is strictly confidential and for verification purposes only. Once the verification is complete, the data must be deleted.”
He also demanded that the data be used “solely for verification and may not be used for any other purpose (including reporting),” and warned that, “We will not provide any responses beyond the verification service as that falls entirely outside the scope of simply providing data.”
Despite this, Bloomberg allegedly shared the information from this disclosure with another journalist who intended to use it as part of a profile on Sun, something his team objected to.
Read more: Justin Sun bailed out $500M stablecoin TUSD, report
As noted by Bloomberg journalist Tom Maloney in that same group chat, “Nobody at Bloomberg agreed to the terms sent by Justin, weeks after the data was shared with us.”
Eventually, someone identified in the chat as BB claims that, “Bloomberg needs Justin’s explicit consent to use his personal financial information.
“It’s his privacy rights in its entirety, Justin never agreed to let Bloomberg use any of this personal financial information outside of just the wealth verification, and the verification alone.
“He never consented to and will not consent to Bloomberg publishing any detail of his personal financial information for reporting purposes, including any breakdown of this wealth sources, except for the one figure of his total wealth estimate.”
However, Maloney once again makes clear that Bloomberg “never agreed to simply do a top-line number.”
Following this discussion, Sun filed a suit, requesting a restraining order that would prevent Bloomberg from publishing a detailed breakdown of his wealth.
Justin Sun claims cryptocurrency is uniquely dangerous
One of the arguments laid out by Sun and his lawyers in the suit is that crypto represents a unique risk compared to other assets, specifically highlighting that transactions are irreversible, and knowing that someone has extensive crypto holdings makes them a target for kidnapping or so-called “wrench attacks.”
It has, obviously, been known for years that Sun has extensive crypto holdings, and many of these wallets are already publicly known.
Sun’s suit claims that his financial privacy would be irreparably harmed by Bloomberg providing a detailed breakdown of his cryptocurrency wealth.
Read more: Justin Sun’s empire may be on the verge of collapse
Furthermore, they argue that Bloomberg’s proposed crypto breakdown is “like a social security number, a piece of private, personal information in which the public has no legitimate interest.”
This leads to interesting questions for this industry, such as, was there a public interest in CoinDesk revealing that a Sam Bankman-Fried-owned trading firm seemed to be in possession of assets that were meant to be under the control of FTX?
Sun’s suit also claims that “the public has an interest in ensuring journalists keep their promises to their sources, in order to encourage the free exchange of information.”
Bloomberg’s response
In Bloomberg’s response to the request for a restraining order, they note that it’s impossible to restrain the publication of Sun’s profile on the Billionaire Index because it was published before Sun’s team filed the suit.
Additionally, Bloomberg notes that Sun’s suit “would irreparably harm Bloomberg by infringing on its First Amendment right not to be subject to a prior restraint.”
It continues, “A prior restraint against publication is an extraordinary remedy that the US Supreme Court has repeatedly said is available only in the rarest circumstances, none of which is present here.”
Justin Sun owns HTX
Sun has previously denied that he owns HTX, an exchange he has admitted to advising.
Protos has previously reported that Sun has a much closer relationship with HTX than he publicly admitted.
Bloomberg’s profile of Sun notes that “Sun owns the cryptocurrency exchange HTX.”
Read more: Justin Sun and Huobi play shell game with ownership
It further notes that “Sun is credited with about 90% of the company, based on information provided by his representatives in May 2025.”
It’s not clear why Sun has previously denied this ownership.
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Source: https://protos.com/justin-sun-sues-bloomberg/