Justin Sun
Justin (Yuchen) Sun is a Chinese entrepreneur and the founder of TRON (TRX).[1] He is also the self-proclaimed protégé of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Sun was listed in Forbes' 30 under 30 list in 2017 for consumer technology.[2][3] Background[edit]Before founding the Tron Foundation, Justin Sun worked for two years as the chief representative and advisor to Ripple in greater China.[4] He is also the founder of PEIWO, an extremely popular mobile social networking and voice streaming app.[5] Overview[edit]In July 2018, Sun purchased BitTorrent for $140 million. BitTorrent is the company that owns uTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing application that has been responsible for 3 percent of the Internet's daily traffic since at least 2015. The announcement said that BitTorrent's team would be working out of the TRON San Francisco location.[6][7] Clashes with Ethereum Founder[edit]Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin clashed with Justin Sun over Twitter on several occasions. In April 2018, Sun posted a diagram arguing that TRON is a superior protocol to Ethereum. Buterin accused Sun over Twitter of misrepresenting the capabilities of Tron's platform and referred to earlier allegations of plagiarism made by others against Sun and TRON.[8][9][10] Buterin made similar jabs at Sun in September while defending a controversial remark he made about the blockchain industry's potential market growth, insinuating that Sun is apt to encourage unrealistic amounts of hype for cryptocurrency products.[11] "Rescue Fund" for ETH and EOS developers[edit]In December 2018, Sun posted a tweet saying that he would build a fund to "rescue" developers of the "collapsing" Ethereum and EOS platforms, on the condition that they migrated their dApps to the TRON network. The tweet was not received with warmly by Ethereum and EOS developers.[12][13] Lunch with Warren Buffett[edit]Justin Sun sat down with Warren Buffett the storied investor in Omaha on January 23, 2020 for dinner. He was joined by Charlie Lee, founder of the Litecoin Foundation; Chris Lee, chief financial officer of the Singapore cryptocurrency trading platform Huobi; Yoni Assia, chief executive of the trading platform eToro; and Helen Hai, head of Binance Charity Foundation.[14] The occasion was kept secret until February 6, when Sun tweeted out pictures and details from the meal.[15] Sun gave Buffet one bitcoin as well as some Tron at the dinner.[16] Sun had won the 2019 annual Power Lunch with Warren Buffett auction. Sun paid $4,567,888 which is contributed to Glide, a San Francisco charity for the homeless. Buffett has been outspoken against bitcoin having called it "rat poison squared."[17] Sun later told CNBC that he wants to use the occasion to change Buffett's mind.[18] The Tron Foundation tweeted on July 23, however, that the July 25 lunch would be postponed due to Sun suffering from kidney stones.[19] CoinDesk tweeted that its Chinese sources had said that the postponement might stem from travel restrictions placed on Sun by the Chinese government due to allegations of illegal fundraising. Sun reportedly refuted those claims. Later in the day CoinDesk confirmed in a tweet that Caixin, a Chinese news service, reported that Sun was "under Chinese government control, meaning there are no formal charges but he cannot leave the country."[20] The Block Crypto reported separately that Sun was in fact in the United States and that Sun had been charged by a special committee on internet safety for involvement with money laundering, illegal fundraising, pornography, and gambling.[21] CoinDesk continued to report that the Chinese press confirmed that Sun remained inside China on July 23.[22] Sun later apologized for acting "immaturely" and setting a "bad example" while promoting the event, saying that delaying the lunch "produced a lot of consequences that I completely did not expect."[23] Later in the summer Sun attempted to reschedule the lunch. He also invited a number of high-profile individuals to join him via Twitter. Sun asked U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, Binance creator Changpeng Zhao, Huobi CEO Livio Weng, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Binance Charity Foundation's head of blockchain Helen Haiyu, eToro CEO Yoni Assia, and Huobi CFO Chris Lee.[24] Anti-FUD Fund[edit]In 2019, Zhao agreed with TRON founder Justin Sun to contribute 100 BTC each to a "FUD Fighting Fund," which would be used to combat FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). This fund would potentially be used as a legal fund used to sue journalists who report stories that run contrary to the business interests of cryptocurrency or blockchain firms...as well as those who evangelically promote the technology.[25] Education[edit]Sun attended Peking University from 2007 to 2011, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts in History. He also studied the liberal arts and sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2010. He attended the University of Pennslyvania from 2011 to 2013, where he received a Master of Arts degree in Political Economy.[26] He was the only millennial student of Hupan University before graduating in 2018.[27][28] References[edit]
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