Tron founder Justin Sun, whose fortune Forbes pegs at roughly $8.5 billion, is asking a Chinese court to force actress Jing Tian's parents to return the 30 million yuan he paid them as a traditional marriage-related gift, after what he calls a $50 million demand blew up the engagement.
Sun, 36, transferred the money, approximately $4.5 million, to the parents of the 38-year-old actress as part of a customary payment tied to their planned marriage. But the relationship fell apart, and Sun now claims the "other party" demanded an additional $50 million connected to having a child through surrogacy in the United States. When he refused, he says, communication was cut off entirely. The New York Post reported that Sun's lawyer, Zhang Qihuai, announced on Chinese social media that a court had accepted the lawsuit naming Jing and her parents as defendants.
In a written response sent to the Wall Street Journal through Zhang, Sun kept his account brief.
"We dated with marriage in mind."
"The engagement could no longer proceed."
That was it, two sentences, no elaboration. But Sun had already said far more in a sprawling social media post titled "My Girlfriend Jing Tian," published before the lawsuit surfaced. The post described what Sun called a longtime crush on the actress, a private movie-theater date, and his payment to her family. It also described Sun seeking advice from Anthropic's Claude AI chatbot after the alleged $50 million surrogacy demand, and deciding, based on the AI's counsel, not to pay.
Sun appended a disclaimer calling the account fictional. That disclaimer made some of the post's most colorful claims impossible to verify independently, raising a question Sun has not answered: which parts does he stand behind, and which does he admit he invented?
A day after news of the lawsuit surfaced, Jing Tian responded publicly. She acknowledged what she described as poor judgment in men but did not lay out her own version of the relationship in detail. Her quoted remarks were pointed.
"I believe in the law."
"Justice and fairness will ultimately prevail."
She also declared she would "never sell my love for money." What Jing did not do, at least in the portions of her statement reported publicly, was confirm or deny receiving the 30 million yuan. She did not address the alleged $50 million surrogacy demand. And she did not identify who, specifically, Sun means by "the other party", herself, her parents, or someone else.
Jing is best known in the West for appearing opposite Matt Damon in "The Great Wall" and for roles in "Kong: Skull Island" and "Pacific Rim Uprising." Her personal life has drawn tabloid attention in China before. She previously dated Chinese Olympic table tennis champion Zhang Jike. In 2023, she was reportedly involved in a scandal surrounding intimate videos and an extortion attempt. Chinese reports said another man was sentenced to seven years in prison for attempting to extort her. Zhang Jike denied allegations that he had provided intimate material to settle gambling debts.
For anyone unfamiliar with Justin Sun, the $4.5 million marriage payment is not even the most eyebrow-raising line item on his personal ledger. Sun founded the blockchain company Tron in 2017 and built a crypto empire that Forbes now values at roughly $8.5 billion. Along the way, he has turned extravagant spending into something close to a personal brand.
In 2024, he paid $6.2 million for a banana artwork by Maurizio Cattelan at Art Basel in Miami, then ate the banana. He paid $4.57 million for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett. And in 2025, he spent $28 million on a seat aboard a Blue Origin spaceflight.
None of that spending generated legal trouble. His crypto business did. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Sun and affiliated entities in 2023, alleging securities violations and market manipulation. A court-entered settlement in March required Rainberry, a company tied to Sun's crypto operations, to pay a $10 million civil penalty. Claims against Sun personally, the Tron Foundation, and the BitTorrent Foundation were dismissed with prejudice, meaning the SEC cannot refile them.
Several basic facts remain unclear. No public reporting has identified the specific Chinese court that accepted the lawsuit, its case number, or the exact date it was filed. Sun's account of the $50 million surrogacy demand is, so far, a single-source claim, his own. He refers only to "the other party," leaving it ambiguous whether the demand came from Jing, her parents, or someone acting on their behalf.
Sun's social media post about the relationship included a fictional disclaimer, yet he simultaneously filed a real lawsuit based on claims that overlap with the post's narrative. That tension has not been resolved publicly. Which details from the post does he treat as fact in court filings? He has not said.
Jing Tian's response, meanwhile, invoked the law and fairness but offered no competing factual narrative. If she disputes the payment, the amount, or the circumstances, she has not said so in public.
A man who spent $6.2 million on a banana he planned to eat is now suing to recover $4.5 million he paid for a marriage that never happened. Whether the courts call it a gift or a contract, the case says more about the price of poor judgment than it does about the price of love.