Justin Sun, the billionaire buyer of Maurizio Cattelan‘s Comedian, recently filed a lawsuit against Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Inc. to prevent the company from “recklessly and improperly disclosing his highly confidential, sensitive, private, and proprietary financial information” they obtained while trying to verify his assets for the company’s Billionaires Index.
Sun’s lawsuit, filed on August 11 in the United States District Court in the District of Delaware, said he “will suffer significant and irreparable harm—both financially and physically—if this sensitive financial information is published by Bloomberg.”
The founder of the cryptocurrency platform TRON alleges that Bloomberg intends to publish “granular detail” about his specific holdings of cryptocurrencies and other assets that would “cause significant harm” and subject Sun to “a significant risk of theft, hacking, kidnapping, and bodily harm to him and his family.”
Sun and his attorney Jeffrey J. Lyons are seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO), as well as a preliminary and permanent injunction, prohibiting Bloomberg from publishing the amounts of any specific cryptocurrency owned by the Hong Kong–based entrepreneur.
However, the attorney representing Bloomberg, Robert M. Vrana, said the basis of Sun’s application for a TRO was “moot” because Bloomberg News had already published the article about him “approximately two hours before Sun’s lawyers gave Bloomberg notice of this TRO application” on August 10. “Because the application seeks only to prevent publication, and publication occurred last night, the TRO application is moot,” Vrana wrote in a response to Judge Maryellen Noreika on August 12.
Vrana also wrote that Sun’s application for a TRO against publication “would irreparably harm Bloomberg by infringing on its First Amendment right not to be subject to a prior restraint.”
The Bloomberg News profile of Sun said his estimated net worth is $12.4 billion, most of it in cryptocurrency with a 1-star confidence rating. Bloomberg News noted Sun’s ownership of “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 percent liquidity discount is applied to the value of the token because Sun controls the majority of its supply.”
In addition to TRON, Bloomberg News reported that Sun owns approximately “17,000 Bitcoin, 224,000 Ether, and 700,000 Tether,” and that other cryptocurrency tokens held on “exchanges such as HTX and Binance are not included in the analysis because the holdings could not be verified.” Sun also owns HTX.
Last November, Sun bought Cattelan’s Comedian (2019) for $6.24 million after a 10-minute bidding war with six other interested bidders at a Sotheby’s evening sale. Shortly afterward, Sun offered to buy 100,000 bananas from the fruit vendor who sold the fruit used for the artwork, and also ate the banana in front of journalists during a press conference in Hong Kong.
Sun has made headlines this year for reportedly spending $75 million on coins from World Liberty Financial, a controversial Trump-backed crypto firm; announcing he would be buying $100 million worth of President Donald Trump’s memecoin, $TRUMP; suing art collector and music mogul David Geffen for the return of a $78 million Alberto Giacometti sculpture and then being countersued by Geffen.
The lawsuit was first reported by Molly White of the newsletter Citation Needed.