The SEC has finally closed the book on its case against TRON founder Justin Sun. After nearly three years of legal back-and-forth, the commission agreed to drop all remaining charges against Sun, the TRON Foundation, and the BitTorrent Foundation. One of Sun’s affiliated companies will pay a $10 million penalty to seal the deal. And wasting no time, Tron Inc. (NASDAQ: TRON) went ahead and purchased 175,251 TRX tokens on the same day at $0.29 apiece.
What Led to the SEC Lawsuit Against TRON
The whole thing kicked off in March 2023. Gensler’s SEC came after Sun hard, claiming he had been selling TRX and BitTorrent’s BTT token to U.S. investors without registering them as securities. That alone would have been a serious charge. But the complaint went further, saying Sun’s team had been gaming trading volumes through wash trades, basically buying and selling between their own accounts to manufacture the appearance of organic demand.
Then there was the celebrity angle. The SEC alleged Sun had quietly paid public figures, including Lindsay Lohan and Jake Paul, to talk up his tokens online. None of them disclosed the payments to their followers, which is a separate violation under the FTC and securities rules.
Sun pushed back on all of it. His legal team contested the claims, and the case ground on for the better part of three years. Meanwhile, the regulatory mood in Washington was quietly changing around them.
Also Read: Who Is Justin Sun? The Controversial Crypto Billionaire at Donald Trump’s Memecoin Dinner
The $10 Million Settlement and What It Covers
The paperwork landed on March 5, 2026. The SEC submitted a proposed final judgment to Judge Edgardo Ramos, who is presiding in the Southern District of New York. The entity cutting the check is Rainberry Inc., which most people still know by its old name, BitTorrent Inc. It will pay $10 million as a civil penalty.
What that payment buys is a full dismissal of claims against Sun personally, the TRON Foundation, and the BitTorrent Foundation. The dismissal is with prejudice, so the SEC cannot come back and refile the same allegations down the road.
Sun posted about it on X and said he was glad to see the matter resolved. He wants to engage with regulators going forward as Washington tries to build a workable crypto policy framework. The settlement is not quite finished though. Judge Ramos still has to put his signature on it before anything is official.
Also Read: How To Save Yourself From Massive “Out of Energy” TRON Fees
Political Criticism Has Been Loud
Not everyone has taken the news quietly. Amanda Fischer, COO at Better Markets and a former senior official under Gensler, publicly called the settlement outrageous. Her position was that the SEC had enough evidence to push through, and that settling on these terms sends the wrong signal to the market.
Several Democratic senators have raised separate concerns about the optics. Sun had put $75 million into Trump-linked World Liberty Financial across two tranches in late 2024 and early 2025. Around the time of the presidential inauguration, he also reportedly purchased $100 million in the $TRUMP memecoin. Senator Elizabeth Warren was among those who questioned whether those financial ties played any role in how the case concluded.
The SEC has been unwinding a number of crypto enforcement actions since the start of the current administration. The Sun case held on longer than most, largely because the fraud and manipulation allegations made it more complex than a standard unregistered securities filing.
Tron Inc. Adds to Its TRX Treasury
Separately, Tron Inc. (NASDAQ: TRON) disclosed that it acquired 175,251 TRX tokens on March 6, at an average price of $0.29 per token. The purchase brings the company’s total TRX treasury to more than 684.9 million tokens.
The company has framed this as part of a longer-term strategy to grow its TRON Digital Asset Treasury holdings as a way to deliver value to shareholders. Its designated on-chain wallet can be tracked live at: tronscan.org/#/address/TEySEZLJf6rs2mCujGpDEsgoMVWKLAk9mT
TRX itself barely flinched on the news. It was sitting around $0.28 to $0.29 at time of writing. Traders had probably seen the settlement coming for a while, so there was not much left to price in by the time it was confirmed.
Also Read: TRON Integrates with Base to Boost Cross-Chain TRX Access
Where Does TRON Go From Here
Q4 2025 was a solid quarter for the network, close to 994 million transactions processed, which was about 16.5% ahead of Q3. Stablecoin flows through TRON are running above $86 billion, mostly USDT. That volume does not just appear out of nowhere. It reflects genuine utility, particularly in markets where dollar access through traditional banking is limited or expensive.
Losing the SEC case as a headline risk should help Sun have conversations he probably could not have before, particularly with institutional players who were watching from the sidelines. Whether that translates into price action for TRX is a different question, but the legal runway is cleaner now than it has been in years.
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