Crypto billionaire takes actress to court over $4.5 million ‘bride price’; says: We dated with marriage in mind, then…
Crypto billionaire Justin Sun is suing Chinese actress Jing Tian and her parents to recover a bride price of 30 million yuan, about $4.5 million or roughly Rs 40 crore, after the couple’s marriage plans fell apart. The Tron founder confirmed through his lawyer that the suit is an attempt to get the money back. “We dated with marriage in mind,” he said.The dispute went public on August 27, when Sun posted a long essay on X titled “My Girlfriend Jing Tian.” He wrote about a crush that dated back to his student days, a theatre he bought out so the two of them could watch Zootopia 2 alone, and the money he wired to her family. The post has since crossed 40 million views. At the bottom, Sun added a line calling the whole account fictional and any resemblance to real people coincidental.
What a bride price is, and why Justin Sun wants 30 million yuan back
A bride price is a traditional gift from the groom’s family to the bride’s family ahead of a wedding, still common across parts of China and usually a fraction of this size. Sun’s version ran to 30 million yuan. He proposed in January and sent the money to Jing’s parents. On the same day as the X post, his lawyer said a court had accepted the case against the actress and both her parents.Sun’s account of the breakdown centres on a surrogacy plan in Southern California. He says the other side asked for $50 million, close to Rs 440 crore, as the couple prepared for the medical procedures. He refused, contact stopped, and the engagement went nowhere. One detail he volunteered: he put the demand to the AI model Claude and followed its advice not to pay.
Jing Tian’s reply: ‘never sell love for money’
Jing, 38, has 26 million followers on Weibo and a filmography that runs from Police Story 2013 to The Great Wall opposite Matt Damon. She replied a day later without naming Sun, saying she had poor judgment in men but would never sell love for money. She said she believed in the law and expected fairness to win.Much of the Chinese internet took her side, less over the money than over Sun airing a private relationship in public. A former state media editor called the essay vicious, while still allowing that an unmarried man asking for his bride price back is not unreasonable.
Why the crypto industry is watching the Justin Sun lawsuit closely
Sun, 36, built Tron in 2017 and is worth an estimated $8.5 billion. He is also the industry’s most reliable generator of spectacle, having once bought a banana duct-taped to a wall for $6.2 million and eaten it in front of reporters. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has publicly suggested he tone it down.The timing is awkward. Crypto trading is banned in China, Beijing has been tightening rules on money moving offshore, and Sun’s HTX exchange has drawn British and EU sanctions over alleged Russian links, which the company says it is addressing.The court has accepted the case, but no hearing date has been made public. Sun has not said whether he will drop the suit if the money comes back before then.
