Crypto billionaire Justin Sun says he paid $4.5 million to the family of Chinese actress Jing Tian as part of plans to marry her — and is now suing to get the money back after their romance fell apart.
Sun — who grabbed headlines in 2024 when he shelled out $6.2 million for an artwork at Art Basel in Miami that consisted of a banana duct-taped to a wall, then promptly ate the banana — claims that the relationship also collapsed amid a $50 million demand tied to having a child through surrogacy in the US.
The 36-year-old founder of blockchain company Tron said the couple had been planning a future together when he transferred 30 million yuan — roughly $4.5 million — to Jing’s parents as a traditional marriage-related payment.
“We dated with marriage in mind,” Sun said in a written response to questions from the Wall Street Journal that was sent to the newspaper through his lawyer.
But Sun said marriage plans with 38-year-old Jing — who appeared opposite Matt Damon in “The Great Wall” and also had roles in “Kong: Skull Island” and “Pacific Rim Uprising” — unraveled as they prepared for medical procedures in the US to have a child.
He alleged that the “other party” demanded $50 million and cut off communication after he refused to pay.
“The engagement could no longer proceed,” Sun told the Journal.
Sun’s lawyer, Zhang Qihuai, said on Chinese social media that a court had accepted a lawsuit seeking the return of the 30 million yuan from Jing and her parents.
Jing has not publicly laid out her version of the relationship in detail. But a day after news of the lawsuit surfaced, the actress wrote that she had shown “poor judgment” in men while insisting she “will never sell my love for money.”
“I believe in the law,” she added, saying that “justice and fairness will ultimately prevail.”
Adding another bizarre layer to the fight, Sun aired his version of the romance in a sprawling social media post titled “My Girlfriend Jing Tian” — only to append a disclaimer saying the account was fictional.
The post described Sun’s longtime crush on the actress, a private movie-theater date and his payment to her family.
According to the post, Sun sought advice from Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence chatbot after the alleged $50 million surrogacy demand — and decided against paying after consulting the AI.
The disclaimer, combined with Sun’s acknowledgment that portions of his account were fictional, has left some of the most salacious details impossible to independently establish.
The lawsuit, however, is real, according to Sun’s lawyer, who publicly identified Jing and her parents as defendants in the dispute over the 30 million yuan transfer.
Sun, whose fortune estimated by Forbes at about $8.5 billion, founded Tron in 2017.
In addition to the infamous banana artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, Sun paid $4.57 million for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett and paid $28 million for a seat on a Blue Origin spaceflight in 2025.
Sun has also faced years of regulatory scrutiny. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued him and affiliated entities in 2023, alleging securities violations and market manipulation.
That case was resolved in March, when a court entered a settlement requiring Rainberry, a company tied to Sun’s crypto operations, to pay a $10 million civil penalty while the claims against Sun himself, the Tron Foundation and the BitTorrent Foundation were dismissed with prejudice.
Jing’s career, meanwhile, has stretched from Chinese films and television into major Hollywood productions. Her romantic life has drawn intense public scrutiny before.
Jing previously dated Chinese Olympic table tennis champion Zhang Jike and was later reported to be the victim in a 2023 scandal involving intimate videos and an extortion attempt.
Chinese reports said another man was sentenced to seven years in prison after attempting to extort Jing. Zhang denied allegations that he had provided intimate material to settle gambling debts.