HTX vs World Liberty war escalates with USD1 delisting

The escalating feud between Justin Sun and Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial has reached a new level as Sun’s HTX has now delisted USD1.

Sun and World Liberty Financial have, for months, been involved in a public dispute that’s spilled over from X and into the courts.

This delisting comes comes after Sun alleged that World Liberty attempted to strong-arm him into becoming a larger minter of the Trump-affiliated stablecoin.

Read more: Trump’s World Liberty Financial sues its advisor Justin Sun

Sun’s lawsuit also claimed that World Liberty had chosen to use undisclosed blacklisting methods to prevent him from participating in governance using the WLFI token and further alleged that World Liberty was using that leverage to extort him to become a larger USD1 minter.

World Liberty’s countersuit against its advisor alleged that Sun had defamed the project in a “coordinated media smear campaign.”

Recently, the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office sanctioned HTX, alleging that it was “providing financial services” to firms that are “carrying on business in a sector of strategic significance to the government of Russia.”

HTX deceptively pretended that these sanctions didn’t apply, despite previous court filings claiming that the sanctioned entity both owned and operated HTX.

Following that, World Liberty made a post on X where it reminded users that “in light of recent sanctions updates, World Liberty Financial maintains risk-based sanctions compliance controls designed to support applicable legal and regulatory obligations across relevant jurisdictions.”

“Transactions involving sanctioned persons, entities, or associated wallet addresses may be subject to enhanced review, rejection, restrictions, or other appropriate compliance actions.”

“Users transferring digital assets should ensure that the source of funds and originating wallet addresses are not associated with sanctioned persons or prohibited activity.”

This led HTX to note on X that “The World Liberty Financial (WLFI) project team recently stated that it has unilaterally imposed a freeze on specific HTX on-chain addresses based on sanctions compliance reviews.

“As a result, the on-chain circulation of certain WLFI assets associated with these addresses has been restricted.”

HTX thus “proactively suspended trading for the WLFI/USDT, USD1/USDT, BTC/USD1, and ETH/USD1 trading pairs as of 13:00 (UTC) on June 5, 2026 to safeguard users’ assets.”

HTX subsequently added that it would be converting USD1 assets left on exchange into USDT.

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