Justin Sun denies liquidation rumours as crypto market slides almost 17%
Tron founder Justin Sun has denied rumours that his positions were liquidated following a slide in cryptocurrency prices.
Rumours began to circulate on X early Monday morning Asia time after an account with just over 11,000 followers posted “Justin Sun finally got liquidated”.
“The rumours about our positions being liquidated are false,” Sun said. “We rarely engage in leveraged trading strategies because we believe such trades do not significantly benefit the industry.
“Instead, we prefer to engage in activities that provide greater support to the industry and entrepreneurs, such as staking, running nodes, working on projects, and helping project teams provide liquidity.”
The rumors about our positions being liquidated are false. We rarely engage in leveraged trading strategies because we believe such trades do not significantly benefit the industry. Instead, we prefer to engage in activities that provide greater support to the industry and…
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) August 5, 2024
Some X users noted the word “rarely” in the statement and enquired the Tron founder what he meant by it, but Sun did not offer any clarification.
The tweet
The tweet that sparked the speculation included a screenshot purportedly showing Sun’s crypto holdings. The post garnered nearly 356,000 impressions.
However, it appears the image was taken from the X account of crypto markets company Parsec, who posted the same screenshot with the caption “a meaty day for on-chain liquidations.”
The original post made no reference to Sun.
The rumours came after the price of Bitcoin plunged 13% in the last 24 hours to $52,864, representing a 24.1% decline over the last seven days.
Meanwhile, Ethereum fell 20% to $2,324 in the last 24 hours, down 30.5% over the week. The drop effectively erases its gains for the year.
In total, the total value of the crypto market has fallen almost 17% over the past 24 hours to $1.8 trillion.
Investors have sold off riskier assets like cryptocurrencies as fears of a recession looms.
In the US, the tech-heavy Nasdaq slid 3.4% last week after less-than impressive quarterly earnings from tech giants like Amazon.
The week capped off the Nasdaq’s worst three-week stretch since September 2022.
The crypto drop has also been linked to a weaker-than-expected job reports as the Federal Reserve opted to hold interest rates instead of promising a rate cut in September, which many investors had bet on.
Callan Quinn is DL News Asia Correspondent. Got at tip? Email at [email protected].
