In early 2025, when the spotlight once again shone on Justin Sun at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Tron founder, dressed in a custom-tailored suit, was fluently explaining "the future of the decentralized internet" in English. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, in an FBI office, his file was being scrutinized by analysts. From a rebellious student at Peking University to a global cryptocurrency giant, this Chinese man has etched one of the most controversial names in blockchain history over the past decade.
Chapter 1: Bitcoin Mining Machines in Peking University Dormitories (2010-2013)
1.1 The Seeds of Rebellion
In 2010, Peking University was filled with idealism. In room 309 of the Chinese Department dormitory, a computer roared day and night, performing operations that most Chinese people at the time could not understand: mining Bitcoin. 20-year-old Sun Yuchen, wearing headphones, published a 10,000-word essay (an argumentative question) criticizing the college entrance examination system in the magazine *Mengya*, while secretly using the royalties to buy a graphics card.
“That computer consumed 20 kilowatt-hours of electricity every day, and the dormitory aunt almost cut off our power,” his later roommate recalled. “Sun Yuchen said that this could change the world more than writing poetry.” At the time, 1 Bitcoin was worth $0.30, while his electricity bill was more than three times his living expenses.
1.2 The Transformation of Pennsylvania
In 2012, Justin Sun received an offer of admission to the East Asian Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania. During his first week in Philadelphia, he happened to attend a lecture at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where the speaker was Kathryn Wood, the legendary investor who later invested in Tesla.
“She said the internet would reshape the way value is transferred,” Sun Yuchen wrote in his diary. “At that moment, I realized that Bitcoin is not a toy.” He then pursued a dual major in computer science, studying the rhyme scheme of Li Bai’s poetry during the day and writing distributed system code at night. When Bitcoin broke through $1,000 in 2013, the 83 Bitcoins he held were worth more than $80,000, equivalent to ten years’ income for a white-collar worker in a first-tier city in China at that time.
Chapter Two: The Ambition of Ripple's First Chinese Employee (2014-2017)
2.1 Breaking into the heart of Silicon Valley
In the spring of 2014, Justin Sun joined Ripple's San Francisco office as an intern. As the first Chinese employee of the blockchain payment company, he witnessed how Silicon Valley packaged technological ambitions into a capital story. "Chris Larsen (Ripple founder) taught me two things," he later recalled, "one is to raise funds with a white paper, and the other is to dance with the regulators."
Nine months later, he returned to China with the title of Ripple's Chief Representative in China, only to be met with setbacks at his first regulatory meeting. "An official asked me what practical problems blockchain could solve, and I memorized the technical parameters for half an hour." That night, he wrote on a notepad at the China World Hotel in Beijing: "In China, you need a story first, then the technology."
2.2 The Birth of "Jack Ma's Disciples"
In 2015, Sun Yuchen made a crucial career shift, enrolling in the first class of Lakeside University. During the graduation photo, he deliberately stood half a step behind and to the right of Jack Ma; this photo later appeared in all his promotional materials. The label of "Jack Ma's disciple" began to circulate, although Alibaba has never officially acknowledged this claim.
The real turning point came in 2017. On September 4th, the day the People's Bank of China halted ICOs, Justin Sun was in Singapore preparing for a project. At 3 a.m., he called his lawyer: "Migrate all Chinese user data to overseas servers, now." 48 hours later, the TRON white paper was released, announcing its ambition to "build a decentralized entertainment empire." Seven days later, the project completed a $70 million funding round.
Chapter 3: The Lunch Game with Buffett (2018-2020)
3.1 A marketing extravaganza worth $4.57 million
In June 2019, Justin Sun won the bid for a lunch with Warren Buffett for $4.57 million, setting a new record for the charity auction in its 20-year history. Following the news, TRX surged 20% in a single day. However, the truly dramatic turn of events occurred three days after the official announcement when he was hospitalized with kidney stones, and the lunch was postponed.
“That was a planned pause,” a former team member revealed. “We needed time to plan the timing of the campaign.” During his hospitalization, he posted seven tweets, all of which trended on social media: #SunYuchenKidneyStones#, #BuffettWaitingOnSunYuchen#, etc. Baidu search index surged by 8,000%.
3.2 A Bitcoin Wallet in Your Pocket
When the lunch finally took place in February 2020, Justin Sun made meticulous preparations: he had a custom-made suit embroidered with the Tron logo, prepared TRX tokens with a cartoon image of Warren Buffett as a gift, and even secretly hid a Samsung phone under his seat—containing a wallet with 193,083 bitcoins (worth about $1.8 billion at the time), ready to give it to Buffett at the "appropriate moment".
“He knew Buffett wouldn’t accept it,” a reporter present recalled, “but this scene was recorded by fifty media outlets.” The next day, the headlines of global technology sections were all about “Chinese post-90s generation trying to change the stock god with Bitcoin.”
Chapter 4: The High-Stakes Gamble to Acquire BitTorrent (2018-2021)
4.1 $140 million to buy the "past"
In July 2018, Justin Sun made the boldest decision of his career: acquiring the declining file-sharing protocol BitTorrent for $140 million. Investment institutions expressed skepticism, and TRX fell 12% that day.
“They don’t understand,” he said in an internal meeting. “We’re not buying technology; we’re buying the mindshare of 100 million active users.” After the acquisition, he flew to BitTorrent’s headquarters in San Francisco and announced in a graffiti-covered conference room: “From today onward, every time you share a movie, you could earn a cryptocurrency reward.”
4.2 The Birth of the Traffic Empire
This high-stakes gamble paid off two years later. In 2020, Tron launched the BTFS decentralized storage network, upgrading the BitTorrent client to a mining node. At its peak, 17 million devices were online simultaneously worldwide, forming the largest decentralized network at the time.
“This is a textbook example of leveraged buyout,” Stanford Business School later included it in its case study, “using traditional internet assets to drive traffic to crypto protocols and achieve a cold start.” Silicon Valley venture capitalists who had once mocked him began to reassess: this Chinese man might know better than they did how to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3.
Chapter 5: The Tightrope Dance of Global Regulation (2021-2023)
5.1 The SEC's Litigation Storm
In the spring of 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Justin Sun, accusing TRX of being an unregistered security. At the time, he was in Seoul negotiating an NFT partnership with BTS Brokerage. The meeting room fell silent; his South Korean lawyers advised suspending all U.S. operations.
“No,” Justin Sun put down his coffee. “We need to speed things up.” The next day, the Tron Foundation announced the establishment of a $10 million legal defense fund and launched an Asian version of its product matrix that was unaffected by US regulations. “He turned the crisis into a marketing event,” (Forbes) wrote, “telling the world: I can deal with the most powerful regulatory agencies.”
5.2 Dominica and "National Cooperation"
In October 2022, the Caribbean island nation of Dominica announced that it would adopt the TRON blockchain as its national blockchain infrastructure and issue DCoin, a fiat digital currency based on TRON. At the signing ceremony, Justin Sun stood side-by-side with Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt.
“This is the first time in blockchain history that a sovereign nation has fully adopted it,” he tweeted, accompanied by a picture of the national flag alongside the Tron logo. Critics accuse him of “regulatory arbitrage,” but undeniably, he has found a path to continue expanding with the backing of sovereign nations.
Chapter Six: Geneva's New Identity (2024-)
6.1 The WTO Ambassador's Briefcase
In January 2024, Justin Sun, in his capacity as Grenada's ambassador to the WTO, entered the Palais des Nations in Geneva. His dark suit was adorned with badges bearing the flags of both countries, and his briefcase contained not only diplomatic documents but also an encrypted mobile phone with ten cryptocurrency wallets installed.
“Identity is a container,” he told his aide. “What matters is what’s inside.” Three months later, he pushed for the establishment of the WTO’s Digital Trade Working Group, citing passages from the Bitcoin white paper three times in his proposal.
6.2 Hong Kong's "Compliance Bets"
In late 2024, as US regulations continued to tighten, Justin Sun shifted his strategic focus to Hong Kong. Tron, in conjunction with Asian financial institutions, issued the first batch of compliant stablecoins, receiving in-principle approval from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. "Ten years ago, people said blockchain needed to circumvent regulation," he said at the Asian Financial Forum. "Now we need to prove that the best blockchains should withstand the strictest regulation."
Sitting in the audience was a partner from a traditional fund who had previously rejected his fundraising request. During the coffee break, the investor approached him and shook his hand: "Mr. Sun, I was wrong back then." Sun Yuchen smiled and replied, "No, we've all evolved."
Epilogue: The Rashomon of the Crypto World
Today, Justin Sun's Twitter FS count exceeds 8 million, more than JPMorgan Chase and Nasdaq combined. Every morning, he still maintains his habit of waking up at 7 a.m., spending an hour simultaneously processing messages on ten mobile phones, from diplomatic emails in Geneva to technical alerts from Tron nodes, and thank-you letters from beneficiaries of the Justin Sun Charitable Foundation.
“Many people ask me who I really am,” he said in a rare in-depth interview in early 2025. “I am a graduate of Lakeside University, a former Ripple employee, a lunch guest of Warren Buffett, a WTO ambassador, the founder of Tron… but these are all roles. The real Justin Sun is an idealist who believes that code can rebuild a trust system, only this idealist happens to be very good at marketing.”
Outside the window, yachts cruised slowly across Lake Geneva. His phone vibrated; the screen displayed: "FBI investigation status update: Under surveillance." He swiped away the notification and continued answering the reporter's questions about the metaverse, as if it were merely a weather forecast reminder.
In the annals of blockchain history, Justin Sun is destined to be the most complex footnote: a rule-breaker and a seeker of rule protection; a marketing master and a protocol builder; a challenger to regulation and an advocate for compliance. Perhaps his most dramatic storyline is like the 2000 transactions per second on the Tron network—forever in confirmation, forever unfinished.
When asked about his vision for ten years from now, the 35-year-old entrepreneur looked out the window: "I hope that by then people will be discussing Tron as casually as they are discussing internet protocols today. And the name Justin Sun should be forgotten."
But history never easily forgets those who dance on the edge of a knife. Whether applause or boos, they have become an indelible part of the industry's DNA. In the tide of decentralization, he is both a catalyst and a shaper of the wave. This duality constitutes the most authentic portrait of the crypto era: there are no simple heroes and villains, only survival artists who constantly redefine the rules of the game.
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