Justin Sun's lawsuit remains public...Final approval pending for the $1 trust fund at Citibank

The California federal court rejected World Liberty Financial's request to transfer Justin Sun's individual lawsuit to a private arbitration process, and decided to maintain a public court hearing. Sun announced the outcome directly on August 20th. World Liberty also submitted a separate request to seal the case documents along with its request for mandatory arbitration, but the court did not grant that request. The lawsuit dates back to September 2025. At that time, World Liberty took restrictive measures after detecting an attempt to move WLFI holdings associated with "Sun" to an exchange. In April 2026, "Sun" filed a lawsuit, claiming that the company secretly created tools to freeze their tokens and restrict sales if the WLFI became transferable. World Liberty, on the other hand, argues that "Sun" proceeded with the prohibited transfer and took actions that were detrimental to the project's interests. The OCC granted World Liberty Trust Company a preliminary conditional approval six days prior, on August 14th. This national trust bank will assume the role previously held by BitGo, managing the issuance, redemption, and reserves of USD1. OCC documents explicitly state that the bank will not issue, hold, or trade WLFI tokens, and also reveal that World Liberty Financial LLC and the trust bank have an indirect joint ownership structure. Final approval is contingent upon meeting the pre-approval requirements, and the OCC explicitly reserves the right to modify, suspend, or revoke the approval if previous reasons arise. As lawsuits and regulatory reviews overlapped, the separation of control over WLFI tokens and the USD1 governance became a practical issue. In June 2026, these concerns materialized. During a separate dispute, HTX's connected wallets were frozen, leading HTX to delist USD1 entirely and convert customer balances to USDT. This case demonstrated that World Liberty's administrative authority could extend beyond individual holders and potentially impact the funds of exchange customers. The USD1 has a market capitalization of approximately 40 billion dollars. The GENIUS Act, a federal stablecoin bill, stipulates that issuers must maintain reserves of at least 1:1 against the circulating tokens. The OCC also requires World Liberty Trust to hold a minimum of $20 million in Tier 1 capital. Like Circle's USDC and Tether's USDT, USD1 also has standard administrative functions, such as address freezing and transaction suspension. The key factors to watch moving forward are whether the court order and subsequent documents reveal a connection between the WLFI token control decision and either the USD1 governance structure or the joint executive and financial structure. If this connection is confirmed, the dispute could expand beyond the individual issue and potentially affect the entire World Liberty group's control structure. Furthermore, this issue is likely to become more prominent, especially in light of the timing of the OCC's final approval decision, raising concerns about the protection of USD1 holders.