Justin Sun: China’s revolutionary crypto visionary

Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain and cryptocurrency made his fortune young from bitcoin trades. Now he wants to change the world

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.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors 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.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.