That’s right, the Justin Sun who spent $6.2 million on a banana artwork (Peter Parks/Getty Images)

Justin Sun’s Tron plans to go public via a reverse merger with SRM Entertainment

Shares of SRM Entertainment surged over 253%.

6/16/25 11:29AM

Tron, the blockchain network founded by crypto billionaire Justin Sun, aims to go public with Nasdaq-listed SRM Entertainment via a reverse merger, according to a Financial Times’ report, which included that Eric Trump is expected to take a role in the firm, though Trump himself later denied he would be involved on X.

SRM Entertainment itself announced early Monday its strategic investment to jumpstart a Tron treasury strategy. The firm entered into a securities purchase agreement with a private investor for $100 million to “acquire up to an aggregate of 220 million shares of common stock at an exercise price of $0.50 per share,” the press release said.

It continued, “The strategic investment, valued at $210,000,000 upon full exercise of the warrants, enables SRM to build a substantial TRON Treasury Strategy.”

The price of TRX, the native cryptocurrency for the Tron blockchain, has increased 3.2% in the last 24 hours, while shares of SRM Entertainment have skyrocketed, jumping nearly 300%. SRM Entertainment will change its name to Tron Inc., and Sun has been named as an adviser to the company.

The announcements come almost one month after Sun said he was the top holder of the $TRUMP meme coin, getting him an invite to President Trump’s gala dinner. On top of his meme coin holdings, Sun owns a substantial amount of the native token from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that sends 75% of its net protocol revenue to DT Marks DEFI LLC, an entity connected to the sitting US president.

In February, roughly one month after the Tron founder announced he was purchasing an additional $45 million worth of World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token, bringing his total investment to $75 million, the SEC and Sun jointly asked a federal judge to pause the agency’s enforcement action on its civil fraud case against him, requesting the court to consider the interest of both parties as well as the public’s interest.

In 2023, the SEC, tasked with regulating financial markets in the US, charged Sun and three of his companies — Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc. — for the unregistered sales of crypto asset securities and the fraudulent manipulation of TRX in secondary markets through wash trading.

Sage D. Young3/20/26

Altcoin trading activity has lost its mojo

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

Main Altcoins Trading Volume in USD — The trading volume of ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, SUI, and LINK.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.”

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%.

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.

“Triple witching” day may put further pressure on bitcoin’s price

This is not “a favorable environment for risk assets.”

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy3/20/26

Sage D. Young

3/19/26

Hyperliquid is the “1,000 pound gorilla in the room” leading year-to-date market gains amid conflict in the Middle East

While the crypto industry has shed $564.3 billion in 2026, Hyperliquid’s native token has bucked the downtrend and jumped 54.8% year to date.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

3/19/26

Bitcoin tumbles as oil and gas prices spike and the market’s mood turns risk-off

Bitcoin ETFs reverted to outflows and bitcoin suffered $192 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours.

Sage D. Young3/18/26

Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter.

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions.

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, has put its IPO plans on hold