Tron Is Ready to Provide FTX With Billions in Aid, Sun Says

Emily Nicolle and Tom Mackenzie, Bloomberg News

Justin Sun, founder of Tron and chief executive officer of BitTorrent Inc., in Hong Kong, China, on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. Sun, the 30-year-old crypto entrepreneur who bought $10 million worth of GameStop Corp. at the height of its Reddit-fueled rally, is predicting a paradigm shift in investing as younger people swarm into financial assets. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Tron is prepared to provide billions of dollars in aid to FTX.com should it go ahead with a deal to rescue the ailing cryptocurrency exchange, founder Justin Sun said.

FTX is currently nursing a shortfall of as much as $8 billion, with its founder Sam Bankman-Fried telling investors on Wednesday that the business will require at least $4 billion in fresh funding to remain solvent. Previous rescue talks with rival exchange Binance fell through on Wednesday, with Sun stepping in to hold discussions shortly after.

When asked whether Tron would have the funds to cover FTX’s financial shortfall, Sun said the firm is prepared to cover the loss once due diligence is done. “I don’t have an exact number, but on our side we know the concept, and I think at this kind of level there is something on the table here,” Sun told Bloomberg TV in an interview on Friday.

Read more: FTX Reaches Pact With Tron to Let Users Withdraw Some Tokens (1)

Tron is a base-layer blockchain network with roughly $10 billion in total locked value, deposited via the various tokens and applications built upon its code. Its hallmark token TRX had a market value of around $5.3 billion on Friday, according to pricing data from CoinGecko.

The platform launched a plan with FTX on Thursday to allow users to withdraw some tokens from the exchange, using an initial capital injection of $13 million. Eligible tokens are those that hail from the Tron ecosystem, including TRX.

Sun said he is taking “a different approach” to that of Binance in his discussions with Bankman-Fried. “We will take care of our customers first and then we will start to measure it and see what we can do here,” he said. “We don’t want to come in too much in the first step.”

(Updates with context around Tron in the fourth and fifth paragraphs.)