Tron Prepares to Go Public After US Halts Investigation Into Founder

Cryptocurrency platform Tron is reportedly preparing to go public in the U.S.

That’s according to a report Monday (June 16) by the Financial Times (FT), which noted that the plans come four months after U.S. regulators agreed to halt a fraud probe into several companies run by Tron’s Justin Sun.

The report, citing two sources briefed on the matter, said Tron will go public in a reverse merger with SRM Entertainment. The deal has been orchestrated by Dominari Securities, a New York-based boutique investment bank with ties to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the sources said.

This new venture will buy and hold the Tron token, much like Strategy — formerly known as MicroStrategy — and its practice of holding bitcoin, one of the sources said. This source added that Eric Trump is expected to take on a role at the company.

According to the FT, the deal will see Tron offer the new company $210 million in token assets, marking the latest arrangement in a wave of crypto deals since President Donald Trump’s embrace of the digital asset industry upon taking office.

In 2023, Sun and three of his companies, including Tron, were charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which accused the firms of selling unregistered securities and manipulating the market.

Then Trump returned to the White House with a more crypto-friendly approach, and the SEC agreed to pause the investigation, as it had with several other companies.

Sun announced in November that he was investing $30 million into World Liberty Financial, a crypto company tied to the Trump family.

“The U.S. is becoming the blockchain hub, and Bitcoin owes it to @realDonald Trump!” Sun said in a post on X. “TRON is committed to making America great again and leading innovation.”

In other crypto-related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the potential for stablecoins to become a “legitimate infrastructure for commerce by challenging legacy roles in the issuer-merchant-acquirer stack.”

For example, Walmart and Amazon are reportedly interested in launching their own stablecoins, while Shopify recently debuted a feature that enables merchants to accept USDC stablecoins within their existing payment and order fulfillment flows.

But for all the momentum, confusion remains, PYMNTS added. Stablecoins offer new efficiencies, but currently, they could expose gaps in oversight, standards and risk controls.