Justin Sun: China’s revolutionary crypto visionary

Justin Sun, founder of blockchain platform Tron

(Image credit: Calvin Sit/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Whatever else he does in his life, Justin Sun will always be known as the “banana” guy – having outbid six other contenders to secure a prime piece of the fruit for $5.2 million (plus $1million in fees) at Sotheby’s New York last week. Of course, it wasn’t just “any old banana”, says The Observer. The centrepiece of an installation called Comedian by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, it comes with 14 pages of instructions, a strip of duct tape to attach it to a wall, and is intended to be “frequently refreshed” or, indeed – as at its 2019 debut at Art Basel in Miami – eaten. The value lies in the “certificate of authenticity”.

Sun, the Chinese founder of the Tron blockchain and cryptocurrency, might have bought the piece for “a bit of fun”, says Fortune. But it’s already proving handy in terms of currying favour with the new regime in Washington. “I’m willing to donate my banana to Elon Musk, tape it to the body of a SpaceX rocket, and send it to both Mars and the Moon,” he posted on X.

I’m willing to donate my banana to Elon Musk, tape it to the body of a SpaceX rocket, and send it to both Mars and the Moon! 🚀🍌🌕🔴 pic.twitter.com/J1eOJEEfp4November 21, 2024

Like Donald Trump himself, Sun is highly invested personally in a relaxation of law enforcement. He must hope there are good odds that a Trump-led Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will drop the charges he faces for “fraud and other securities violations” as it “resets its approach to cryptocurrencies”.

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The booming crypto Trump trade, meanwhile, has given him largesse to spare, says Crypto.news. Tron (TRX) has been “one of the top-performing coins”, enjoying 80% year-to-date gains, while the company has shot to a market capitalisation of more than $17 billion – due to its emergence as one of the big players in “stablecoin” payments. The Tron network handled Tether tokens worth more than $196 billion in one day on 22 November. “Its average daily volume is often higher than that of Visa.”

Sun, 34, is one of a generation of Chinese entrepreneurs caught in limbo between the superpowers. An “arch internationalist”, he reportedly has a Maltese residency card and, a few years back, got himself appointed as Grenada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organisation, in hopes of promoting the Caribbean island as the test bed of a blockchain-driven economy. Last month, says The Telegraph, he became prime minister of the “bitcoin micronation” of Liberland – a patch of land on the banks of the Danube and “an experiment in crypto-sovereignty”.

Born in Xining, in China’s Qinghai province, Sun studied history at Beijing’s elite Peking University and then headed for the University of Pennsylvania for a masters in East Asian studies. During his time in the US, Sun encountered bitcoin for the first time and was smitten by its immense potential and disruptive power, says Quartz. He invested and by the time he returned to China in 2013 – with a role as chief representative and adviser to the US firm Ripple Labs’ under his belt – was already one of the youngest crypto millionaires. Sun’s prowess caught the eye of Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, who recruited him to join his elite business school, Hupan University, says The Telegraph.

What's next for crypto mogul Justin Sun?

After launching Tron, Sun staged an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in Beijing, days before the government banned them, and flew to San Francisco with the proceeds. Last year, he was sued by the SEC for allegedly trying to inflate the price of tokens through social media hype and by engaging in “wash trades” to inflate trading volumes. Sun is thirsty for success, with “seemingly limitless energy”, noted The Verge in 2022. In 2023, he proposed buying collapsed Swiss investment bank Credit Suisse for $1.5 billion to “integrate it into the Web 3.0 world”, says the Financial Times. Imagine the consternation in Zurich! Part shock-jock, part financial visionary, Sun is bent on impressing himself on mainstream finance and culture. The banana is just the start.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.