The madness of an era is condensed into the madness of one person.
escape
This summer, we tried to find Justin Sun in Singapore.
People who are familiar with him said that he lives in a three-story villa with a swimming pool on Sentosa Island in the south of Singapore. Justin Sun spends 90,000 Singapore dollars (approximately 480,000 yuan) per month to rent luxury homes.
Through the two-story floor-to-ceiling window in the villa, you can see a suspended swimming pool. Half of the pool leads to the edge of the mansion and half to the underground garage.
The underground floor is an art collection. Sun Yuchen’s former assistant revealed that his personal collection is already worth more than 1.2 billion yuan. Including the 1932 Picasso masterpiece "Reclining Nude with a Necklace" worth $20 million, Andy Warhol's "Three Self-Portraits" sold at Christie's in London for $2 million, and a Swiss sculptor worth $560 million Giacometti sculptures and other works.
The sun in Singapore is dazzling. The streets here are quiet during the day, with the occasional few people in suits and leather shoes walking in a hurry in the heat. The climate conditions here are indeed not as good as California, where he once lived for a long time, but he left there before the rumors of being investigated by the FBI leaked out.
Before we went, Sun Yuchen expressed to us many times that he was very willing to talk to us. "We will finalize a time for you to come to Singapore within this week" and "I hope the reception will not be inappropriate." However, he kept delaying the meeting time and repeatedly Break your own deadlines.
We decided to fly directly to Singapore. Standing on the street, he sent him a WeChat message, "Would you like to treat us as a landlord and treat us to a cup of coffee?"
"Make a date!" Justin Sun replied almost immediately, "I'll be there this week, it depends on your time!"
"How about tomorrow afternoon?" After this message was sent, he never received a reply. Just like Farage searching for Marilyn Monroe on the streets of New York more than 60 years ago, we did not see Justin Sun in the end.
He once again completed a classic "escape performance", first making a big promise, impressing the other party with enthusiasm, and then escaping from an environment that was not so favorable to him - just like when he disappeared from the election for the president of the Peking University Student Union and rejected himself Buffett's lunch was photographed, he cashed out from TRON and Huobi, and left China and the United States one after another after releasing negative signals at the regulatory level.
There is no doubt that Justin Sun is the most controversial "entrepreneur" in contemporary China. He founded the blockchain platform Tron and took over Huobi, but because of his crazy harvest, he became one of the most hated people by blockchain investors.
In the past ten years, from a "niche money printing machine" to a "public sickle", the Chinese people's impression of "digital currency" has drastically changed - Justin Sun has played an important role in this. Today, "blockchain" has long been eliminated from the popular vocabulary in the Internet circle. The people who pursued it back then have "survived the dangerous shoal of digital currency, walked out of the garden of the metaverse, and are rushing towards the light of the AIGC large model." future". But history will remember it all. A hundred years later, when our descendants re-examine the rise of blockchain in China, Sun Yuchen’s name will definitely be mentioned.
The madness of an era is condensed into the madness of one person. To capture Justin Sun is to capture the Chinese history of blockchain.
And now, when we mention Justin Sun's name, some people describe him as a "bad guy who does all kinds of evil", others think he is a "complete bastard", and some even say, wait for him to XX (here are two hidden characters because of violence) word) that day on the street.
Among the many Justin Suns, which one is the real him?
"We've been talking to a lot of your old acquaintances lately, and they all say you're an asshole. So, are you?"
In the phone call before he fled, we asked him this. Sun Yuchen struggled for a while and replied:
"I feel that many of the people who criticize me are people who have not made any money from me," he said.
This is a typical Justin Sun answer. On people's mobile phones and computers, he is good at playing a brilliant person in various crazy ways, but in the real world, he habitually avoids serious problems.
We tried to add a little "analytical" footnote to his various actions, such as his growth experience, the industry he was in, and the psychological state affected by these experiences. Just like the opinion of the famous psychologist Post in his article in "Psychopathology", well-known people in various fields are often more likely to suffer from mental illness.
Although Sun Yuchen emphasized on the phone that his state and mood were busy and positive, his past behavior is difficult to describe as a "normal, healthy" adult as people understand it.
He pursued some things too much and endured some things too much. After repeated tearing and tearing of cells and meridians, some abnormal characteristics begin to emerge, eroding trust, freedom, and even everything except money, leaving behind loneliness.
In the blockchain industry, Justin Sun is a veritable boss. People familiar with Justin Sun say that his worth is likely to be as high as tens of billions of dollars. But because of his existence, some bad trends are spreading at a faster pace - greed, selfishness, fear, and fame-seeking.
A strange "patient"
When you realize there's something "off" about a person, it's often through a series of out-of-character observations.
When outsiders see Justin Sun, he is often humble, polite and sincere in his speech. "In winter, Justin Sun also wore a suit and had oily hair, looking decent and appropriate." Many people recalled, "This dwarfed the reporters wearing heavy down jackets." "He doesn't look like someone from the Internet circle, but like someone from the financial circle."
In the office, Justin Sun seems to be a different person, always showing his irritability. "X your mother, you f*ck" is his catchphrase. A former Tron employee said that Justin Sun often cursed people, "You guys know how to budget all day long, and you moms only spend money if you don't make a dime."
Even in a city like Singapore that values work-life-balance, where getting off work means not replying to work emails, Justin Sun often assigns tasks late at night and requires employees to respond immediately.
But when others are busy, he often takes a break. Even when he is in a meeting, Justin Sun will refresh social and video software over and over again, almost obsessively searching for his own name on it - checking all topics related to him, reading comments, and many times he will curse people in person.
Not long before accepting our invitation, this “bastard” as everyone calls him went to the Hong Kong Web3 Conference. Upon learning that Justin Sun was going to give a speech, a blockchain industry group launched a "reward" crowdfunding campaign, "finding someone to come on stage and give him two 'big bucks'." The news quickly reached Justin Sun's ears. In a screenshot of WeChat circulated in the circle, he "warned" the security team, "If I get a big blow, you are the only one I will ask."
Just in case, he set his security budget for the day at 80,000 Usdt (a virtual currency), which is equivalent to nearly 600,000 yuan in RMB.
In hindsight, the episode may have been just an expensive piece of marketing. Justin Sun’s friend, Du Jun, co-founder of Huobi and founder of Node Capital, told us that Justin Sun will never give up any means of marketing himself.
If you click on any post about Sun Yuchen, you can see a lot of criticism, ridicule and even curse words in the comment area. There is a comic contrast between his reputation and his positioning of himself.
His public relations team asked the media: "Whenever Mr. Sun Yuchen himself is mentioned, his 4 positions must exist, and none of them are indispensable." They are, "Grenada's Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Huobi Global Advisory Committee His Excellency Mr. Justin Sun, member and founder of TRON”.
This is inevitably reminiscent of Daenerys Targaryen, the "Dragon Mother" in "Game of Thrones". Every time she appears, she has to read her name for three minutes: the daughter of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen II. , the last descendant of the ancient Targaryen dynasty, the legal heir to the Iron Throne, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Breaker of Chains, the Queen of Meereen, the Mother of Dragons...
But as we have said - while your Excellency insists on respect, the outside world insists on humiliation in return.
At the end of the last century, artist Andy Warhol predicted, “In the future, everyone will be a celebrity for 15 minutes.” Now, this sentence has become a reality. But Justin Sun has shown that celebrities are not always what you imagine.
“After getting rich, many people start to enjoy life.” A blockchain exchange practitioner said that the “big guys” who are famous in the industry are extremely low-key and even spend a lot of money to hire private detectives to help hide their whereabouts.
But Sun still craves exposure. At the beginning of this year, a new book "Blockchain and the New Digital World" was released. The writing seriously introduces the impact of blockchain on the digital era.
The author is signed by Sun Yuchen, but multiple former employees of Huobi confirmed that they hired graduate students as writers, and the "ghostwriting fee" was about 200,000 yuan. Because many publishing houses were unwilling to accept it, the PR team ended up publishing it at their own expense.
Whether he is personable, violent and rough, or conscientious, these labels are not in line with the public's perception of Justin Sun. In many people's perception, he should be sinister and cold-hearted.
If we believe that Justin Sun's state when getting along with people around him is closer to his true colors, then a reasonable inference is that his impression in the minds of the public is the result of his years of deliberately playing the role.
Like a person who is "confused" because of a fever, he insists on making remarks for many years that are not consistent with common sense and do not meet his level of knowledge, including but not limited to: Luo Yonghao is restricted from high consumption, and he gave the former a million-dollar annual salary offer; when Xpeng users defended their rights, Sun Yuchen posted on Weibo that he would personally subsidize 1 million to help users hire lawyers; after the Liu Qiangdong Mingzhou incident, he had another whim and claimed that he wanted to invest 100 million to make a movie. He had already thought of a name, called "Mingzhou Chronicles".
There seems to be some obscure element about this gentleman that is hard to explain, and it is difficult for you to clearly see the consequences of approaching him. Just like there is a thin line between genius and madness, "sick" or "healthy" is often just a moment away.
No one is sick all the time, but Justin Sun's madness makes him always look like one.
Only “patients” can get rich in the blockchain
Justin Sun's ex-girlfriend recalled that when a group of people were eating coconut chicken, Sun would scoop most of the chicken into his bowl at once as soon as it was cooked, so as not to give him the chance to eat it. "People who ate with him later discovered that he was doing business the same way."
Many people got to know Sun Yuchen because of an "illness" and a lunch.
In 2019, Justin Sun photographed Buffett having lunch. The subsequent plot has been reported by countless media - before leaving, Sun Yuchen announced that he would cancel the meeting with Buffett due to a sudden kidney stone. After that, Sun Yuchen publicly postponed the lunch meeting many times.
Every cancellation and postponement is a double boiling of public opinion and the price of TRON currency. The mysterious style of play has achieved complete victory.
Justin Sun finally met Buffett, at a burger joint in a remote rural area of the United States—informed sources tell us that the two had burgers instead of Buffett's classic lunch at a steakhouse. Justin Sun gave Buffett an Android phone with the Tron APP installed on it. After the meeting, Justin Sun excitedly told his assistant that they had a great conversation and that Buffett was already a virtual currency holder.
We have no way of knowing whether Buffett and Sun Yuchen met too late. What is certain is that after that meeting, Buffett criticized virtual currencies many times and completely stopped the "Buffett Lunch" event in the next year.
What an embarrassing fact.
When Buffett boarded the private jet to leave, I wonder if he was reciting his famous quote in his heart, feeling afraid of Sun Yuchen's greed. But Justin Sun, an escape artist, has his own reasons for being able to beat Buffett by relying on an empty city plan. “Not everyone is as morbidly crazy as he is,” his former assistant told us.
Since he was a teenager, Justin Sun has shown his "weakness" more than once, but he has always been able to cleverly get what he wants.
Justin Sun, who was born in 1990, started an alternative life soon after entering Peking University. He had radical ideas and always openly criticized the school's management system.
Because of his large number of supporters, he ran for president of the Peking University Student Union as an independent candidate. It’s the same thing that starts with a crazy campaign and then disappears on election day. The only difference was that the reason for Sun's disappearance that time was not illness. He claimed to have been "imprisoned" by the school youth league committee for more than ten hours.
The "victim" image ensued, but it allowed him to amass more fans. Later, with the rise of Weibo, he began to follow the example of "public intellectuals" and "big V" to discuss current social affairs, and frequently called for "saving the country."
Because he was worried about being expelled from Peking University, Sun Yuchen applied for graduation a year in advance, and then entered the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. While in the United States, he continued the style of the domestic period, founded a magazine, and wrote spicy commentary. But it didn’t take long before his article was pointed out as being seriously plagiarized, and many people came around to it.
Amid the controversy, Justin Sun became "sick" again and rumors of suicide circulated, which eventually ended with the magazine closing down.
When he was frustrated, Sun Yuchen joined the Penn Investment Association, hoping to meet some wealthy Americans. There he tried to leverage stocks and currencies, entered the blockchain industry, and experienced the fun of making money.
This is where a twists and turns story unfolds. In 2013, he returned to China and established Ruibo Technology, the predecessor of TRON, after receiving support from IDG Capital.
The popularity of the young Sun Yuchen is somewhat marked by the times - the Internet has extended the youth of that generation. "Because of the attributes of young people, deviant voices are more likely to be heard," said a person who had contact with Sun Yuchen during his time at Peking University. . It was not until a few years later that some people began to reflect on whether using radical means to gain fame was a model worth learning from.
But Sun Yuchen obviously had no time to reflect, and his radical playing style was quickly brought into a new world. There, he put away his "weak" side and began to show a "sick" smile.
In the blockchain industry, Justin Sun is considered an “early riser”. But no matter whether you join this industry sooner or later, you can't escape the fear caused by two "viruses" - one is called "shrewdness" and the other is called "snobbery".
In the brutal killing field of virtual currency, there is almost no sickle sharper than Justin Sun.
In the early years, there was a technical expert named Xu Baolong in Justin Sun’s Tron team. Every time before Justin Sun announces good news, Xu Baolong's team will quickly buy. When the price soars, they quickly sell short to make profits.
In 2017, “Tron” ushered in a ban shortly after its creation. On September 4 of that year, seven departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China and the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the "Announcement on Preventing Financing Risks of Token Issuance" (hereinafter referred to as the "94 Announcement"), comprehensively halting the issuance of virtual currencies and requiring all issued virtual currencies to Do a cleanup.
However, Justin Sun "happened" to complete the issuance and sale of Tron coins the day before.
Justin Sun, who was abandoned by the policy, at least still has users. But soon, users came around.
In November 2017, TRON listed on overseas exchanges and issued TRX coins. At first, the market price of one TRX was only 1 cent. But since the end of November, as the price of Bitcoin continued to rise, the market picked up. By December, the price of TRX was raised to 2 yuan.
Then someone discovered that more than 50% of TRX was stored in the same wallet, and the proportion of "retail investors" circulating in the market was only 9%. Someone else discovered that Justin Sun's wallet transaction records showed that he sent 200 million TRX to trading platforms such as Binance to exchange for Ethereum every day. This behavior lasted for 19 days. Afterwards, someone did some calculations. According to the currency price at the time, Sun Yuchen cashed out approximately 12 billion yuan (some say that Sun Yuchen only cashed out 2 billion yuan).
The large-scale sell-off soon led to a stampede run, and the price of TRON currency instantly plummeted by 20%. Once again "coincidentally", Sun Yuchen ran before the plunge.
He always manages to be the fastest runner, as he did when eating coconut chicken.
Ten months after Tron was founded, Justin Sun claimed that his net worth has reached tens of billions. But then the wealth of a group of people disappeared, leaving only self-mockery, "Brother Sun smiles, life or death is unpredictable."
The origin of this sentence goes back several years. Once Justin Sun did a live broadcast and endorsed a currency. Some netizens left a message in the live broadcast room, "Brother Sun, don't laugh, I'm so scared." Sun Yuchen looked dismissively, "Do I like your three melons and two dates?"
A few months later, investors who bought that coin were all locked up at a high price, and "the situation was so tragic that it can only be described as losing all their money."
Even after he later took over Huobi's business, Sun Yuchen did not give up the "three melons and two dates" of retail investors. Many people in the industry accused us that Sun Yuchen had repeatedly used Huobi to "prick the needle" - this is also called "directional blasting". He used methods such as server delays, downtime, and modification of K-lines to mislead investments and manipulate currency prices. The user maliciously liquidated his position.
"The money he makes from 'needling' is not enough for his hourly wage, but he just wants to make it." Said an investor in the currency circle who had contact with Justin Sun.
As fear spread, users began to flee the Huobi Exchange, and this supposedly strongest barrier gradually collapsed.
Everything is like the reincarnation of Sun Yuchen's road to fame at a young age. He has once again achieved a success that seems to be achieved without too much cost and price, but is difficult for most people to achieve. In early interviews, he mentioned many times that the family education he received since childhood was that no matter what he did, he "must win."
The road to victory is full of ups and downs, and the hardest thing is to break through one's "heart." Not everyone can do all kinds of "ignoring".
Justin Sun's choice would have the same outcome if he changed to another industry.
In addition to blockchain, he once had a "accompany me App". It was a social networking software for strangers that he acquired shortly after returning to China. It focused on anonymous chatting. Girls could choose to make paid calls. The profit model was simple and crude.
"Stay with me" has made Sun Yuchen very profitable, but the soft porn service policy has huge risks. A few years later, Sun Yuchen closed "Stay with Me" and told people around him that this kind of operation-focused business was "not cost-effective enough."
But this is the closest to a "normal" venture that Justin Sun has ever made. Even though "lust" is the same as speculation in virtual currency, it is valued because it is addictive.
One unconfirmed detail is that an old acquaintance of Sun Yuchen said that someone told Sun Yuchen's fortune in his early years and "said that he was not suitable for pragmatism, but suitable for retreat." After emerging in the blockchain industry, he once told this matter to others as a "things are inevitable" argument. Justin Sun's Douyin has 420,000 fans, and TRON, which he founded, has hundreds of millions of accounts (as of 2022). Perhaps the encounter between the retreat master and virtual currency is really a coincidence of history.
Disease Outbreak: Trust Dies
In the winter of 2017, in a courtyard in the East Second Ring Road of Beijing, a KTV closed to the public called "I If" had ambiguous warm-toned lighting. While drinking and drinking, Sun Yuchen, a rising star in the currency circle, had a very speculative chat with Xu Zijing, a celebrity in the currency circle at the time.
Xu Zijing, nicknamed "Martian", was a dazzling star in the blockchain industry at that time. At that time, the Martian currency HSR was also one of the hottest currencies.
According to a person who was very close to Sun Yuchen, Sun Yuchen spent the whole night talking about his ideals, the future of HSR and Tron currency. "Xu Zijing felt that Sun Yuchen was a formidable young man, and he acted like he liked him very much." At the end of the conversation, "the two decided to exchange coins," the above-mentioned person said. "Afterwards, Justin Sun said that the Martian exchanged 140,000 HCASH (HSR) for 333 million TRON coins, and the two completed the exchange on the spot."
The pleasant party lasted until two o'clock in the morning, and Sun Yuchen said that he wanted to go back to the company. When Xu Zijing sent him to the door of the courtyard, he did not forget to praise Sun Yuchen's dedication and diligence with the people around him.
Then - according to the scene described by the above-mentioned person - Sun Yuchen went out, turned a corner, leaned against the wall, and sold all the HSR that had just been redeemed by Xu Zijing at the entrance of the alley.
According to people familiar with the matter at the time, Sun Yuchen made nearly 30 million yuan by selling HSR. This directly caused the price of HSR to plummet. When Xu Zi woke up after a toast the next day, HSR had already triggered a stampede decline, "This coin has no power to recover."
This incident was not publicly reported, and the above scene was described by many people familiar with Sun. When Martian Xu Zijing asked 36Kr whether the incident was as described above, he chose silence.
This seems illogical at first glance. Why do Martians trust Justin Sun so much? From the perspective of outsiders, this is like exchanging more liquid US dollars for Zimbabwean currency, or exchanging Alibaba's equity for a start-up company.
But insiders were not surprised. Mutual currency exchange and endorsement became very popular in the currency circle around 2017. "The Martians have too many coins, and Sun Yuchen has a lot of titles, which is also very convincing to others." Perhaps more importantly, "the people who exchanged coins with the Martians before had a moral bottom line, which made him overestimate human nature."
"If it were in a disaster movie, Brother Sun must be the one who does everything possible to survive until the end." People who are familiar with Justin Sun say that he is selfish and greedy enough.
These two personalities have indeed helped Sun Yuchen build his wealth. But in the long run, it is like two kinds of defects, which eventually penetrate into the blood and help the subject wear away an important emotional relationship-trust.
"He has no friends or allies in the world. Once there are differences in cooperation, he will definitely cheat the other party, and he will feel happy because he cheated the other party, and will also develop a sense of intellectual superiority." Justin Sun's only public girlfriend Ma Jiajia told us.
To make matters worse, people saw a new example - at the end of the known story, selfish and greedy people were not punished.
Liu Ming, Sun’s senior at Peking University and an early Tron employee, is also one of his old enemies. TRON’s first white paper was written by Liu Ming.
During the phone call with us, Liu Ming claimed that in addition to the white paper, there was also the proposal report of Sun Yuchen’s graduation thesis (on blockchain) at Hupan University. “I wrote them all, but Sun Yuchen later took over and said it was his own work”.
In his opinion, he is one of the founders of Tron - when the company was preparing to launch the ICO, there were only five people in the team, and no one except Liu Ming understood blockchain and ICO. He recalled that when the roadshow went to Changsha, his colleagues in Beijing called him and asked him: "What is ERC20?" ERC20 is the standard for issuing tokens on the smart contract platform Ethereum. His colleagues had no idea about this concept, which surprised Liu Ming.
But the "veteran" soon almost went to jail. When the "94 Announcement" was released, Sun Yuchen was in South Korea. He stated in the live broadcast that the proceeds obtained from domestic currency issuance would not be refunded. This means that employees who remain in the country face huge legal risks. "We are all going to jail. He doesn't care about our situation and feelings at all."
In the end, under pressure from Zhao Changpeng, He Yi and others, the founders of Binance, Sun Yuchen returned the Bitcoins obtained from the ICO. However, because the private placement part has been cashed out, industry insiders speculate that Justin Sun used the money from selling the "Martian" HSR coins to fill the gap.
But the former partners eventually parted ways. According to Liu Ming, when the Tron project is successful, it will be very valuable. Liu Ming hopes to realize the share of the shares that he had verbally negotiated with Sun Yuchen. "I don't want more, just about 5%." But Sun Yuchen refused, and the two broke up on bad terms.
And Changpeng Zhao, the “eldest brother” of the industry who once had a personal relationship with Justin Sun and the founder of Binance, cannot escape the former’s selfish side.
In May this year, Binance launched a mining project, and users can use BNB and TUSD (two stable coins) to mine.
On the same day, Justin Sun transferred a huge amount of TUSD into the mining project in ten transactions, which resulted in a large portion of the mines being mined by Justin Sun - a disguised form of squeezing out and expelling other medium-sized players and small players. Zhao Changpeng then mocked Justin Sun on social networking sites, and the latter responded remotely, saying, "I made a mistake, I added a few more zeros."
"It's embarrassing for me to see this kind of thing. When making money, Brother Sun doesn't care who the other party is, and his bottom line is very low," said a former Tron executive.
Controversy arose as a result, and some people who could still understand Sun Yuchen began to switch sides. They expressed confusion about 36 Krypton and why Sun Yuchen still showed greed when he was already so rich. In fact, on the other hand, being greedy enough may explain the path to "success" of Justin Sun - in his early years, he told the media who came for interviews many times that how much money he made was his only criterion for measuring success.
"Sun Yuchen is like a drug addict who is highly addicted to making money because he has no way to get any happiness from anywhere else." Ma Jiajia told us.
When his former friends have turned against him, money can at least buy employees and a community of interests. They are the few guarantees for this "patient" besides wealth, but now Justin Sun is about to lose even them.
A Tron employee accidentally discovered that he had digital currencies worth millions of yuan on Binance. Then everyone discovered that "it was Justin Sun who used the identity information of multiple Tron employees to open an account on the Binance trading platform, and transferred the Tron coins he controlled into the account to sell them for cash." Outraged, the employee eventually quit.
It may only take a small amount of money to ruin a labor relationship. In October last year, after Justin Sun became a member of the Huobi Global Advisory Board and gradually took over Huobi.com, he began "disguised layoffs." According to information in the Huobi employee rights protection group, the methods include "not reimbursing employees for advance travel expenses, increasing the number of excessive salary deductions, and not receiving compensation even if they are laid off."
In contrast, in 2019, when Huobi founder Li Lin officially gave up his business and shifted Huobi overseas, he spent tens of millions in his own name and paid each employee an extra month of salary.
Under such circumstances, trust is shaky and has become an empty term that is inconvenient to delve into. Some employees are worried, "If something happens to Huobi, Li Lin will take care of it. But when Huobi is in trouble, Justin Sun will only take out the bottom, so everyone just thinks about how to make a profit and runs away, betrayal in both directions."
Terminal illness: only a lonely planet left
In the end, lovers and blood ties became the last layer of safety net, maintaining the weak relationship between this "patient" and free existence. They almost pulled him back to a normal world.
Justin Sun's father works at Huobi.com, specializing in catching corruption. Internally, his father is called "Master" and "Head of the Huobi Discipline Inspection Commission." A Huobi employee once said, "Justin Sun doesn't believe anyone. He always feels that someone is corrupt." For a period of time, all the money he made was managed by his father.
Ma Jiajia said that Sun's father was conservative and old-school, and had seriously considered "handing over" all the money "in exchange for his son's freedom to return to China, but everyone has seen the result."
She and Justin Sun had a real relationship for a period of time. However, Justin Sun's extremely weak contractual spirit not only led to the breakdown of his relationships with his colleagues, but also led to the failure of intimate relationships. Ma Jiajia believes that "being with him is a stain on my life."
Having reached this point today, there is only a huge dissatisfaction between the former lover. "He stands on top of the heads of people all over the world. I used to think that he would spend his whole life to go to the step of being anti-human and anti-society. I didn't expect that he would do it in one step." We’ve arrived.”
Justin Sun’s mansion rarely welcomes a real hostess. Even his assistant who is close to him, a person who has followed him for many years, thinks that his inner sense of boundaries is extremely clear. "I sometimes ask him, Brother Sun, how many girlfriends do you have now and do you have any plans to get married? He will change the subject."
He may have thought about having a child, but he didn't value the role of "mother." A former Huobi employee said that Justin Sun had seriously studied artificial insemination and surrogacy.
There is no need for a trusting relationship, and I am not good at romantic relationships; I am not obsessed with fame, and I still make enough money. When the big guys in the currency circle are generally enjoying the top wealth in the world, he seems like a person who is unable to struggle and no longer cares.
In Singapore, he rarely participates in the rich people's life and yacht parties. "Look at the occasionally circulated photos of him with others. They are all very business gatherings, with everyone wearing fake smiles and raising glasses to pose for photos," said a blockchain practitioner.
In the poker and egg-breaking games that are often held in the circle, you can't see Sun Yuchen. Du Jun remembers that he and Justin Sun attended the after party after the Hong Kong web3 conference in April this year. At that time, many familiar people in the circle were playing cards in full swing and called them to come and play, but Sun Yuchen held the wine glass and only watched from a distance for a while.
He doesn't seem to have any special hobbies other than making money. According to his assistant, Sun Yuchen works from morning to night, at home and in the office. Moreover, he has no appetite and only eats food cooked by the family chef every day. The meals were put into lunch boxes and brought into his office. They looked just like the most ordinary lunch boxes outside. And in order to stay in shape, he often kills a meal with a little vegetable salad.
This goes against the imagination of many blockchain investors. In their view, Justin Sun should be extravagant and extravagant. "I wouldn't be surprised if Brother Sun made a toilet made of pure gold."
The scenes and views described in the documentary "A Rich Life" are more in line with the public's understanding of the life that Justin Sun should have - customized yachts, mansions, and top-notch luxury cars studded with diamonds. These super-rich people can get everything with just a snap of their fingers. Justin Sun seems to have none of the "toys" that can be easily obtained. In the existing culture, "people are more willing to talk about the new rich than old money, so the visible wealth (of the new rich) is very important."
Only when you go out with him on the street, you will have some understanding of the reasons for the above scene - the bodyguards are always around you. Some people even suspected that he had a body armor in his coat when he went to crowded places.
Although the rich spend huge sums of money on security every year, not everyone has the same fear as Justin Sun.
An entrepreneur who has close personal relationships with many big names in the cryptocurrency industry said that he heard in March this year that Justin Sun’s “reward” in the mainland had reached as high as 50 million yuan.
"People around him have been coming and going, and everyone is thinking about how to make a fortune from him." Perhaps the only people who really care about him are those who have been "harvested" by him, and they are eagerly waiting for him to return to China.
"To be honest, I don't want a life like Sun Yuchen's," said the above-mentioned entrepreneur.
Rich Life believes that people with extremely high net worth have serious trust issues, which makes their lives extremely complicated. And most wealthy people face a final fear: who will remember them and how they will be remembered. "When we look at them from afar, we wish we could have such a life ourselves, but the ultimate luxury, such as security and fearlessness, cannot be bought with any amount of money."
We talked about a senior student of Sun Yuchen’s at Peking University, who also joined the Peking University Student Union. But when it comes to this junior student who he had crossed paths with before, he thinks this is a person not worth discussing. "At least we won't take the initiative to talk about him when we get together. A person who cannot bring value to the world does not rely on creativity for his success. If a person is the enemy of the world, he cannot be the boss."
We tried to contact people who had helped and invested in Sun. The reply I got was, “We can talk about the post-90s entrepreneurs, but we have no position (to talk about him) regarding Justin Sun.”
He seemed to be on a lonely planet. No one is willing to spend energy to care about the secret of his heart - whether he will regret if he cannot return to mainland China in his life. And where will the planet he is on eventually wander to.
Therefore, you can easily have a question, why is Justin Sun like this, and what else does he want?
Many media attributed his excessive pursuit of success to his parents' constant quarrels when he was young, his mother's overpowering tutor, his tutor who wanted to be first in everything, and his insecure native family. But it no longer matters whether this is the right answer. As an adult, he will only be drifting with the flow of fame and fortune.
As for the latter question, we asked him on the phone. Not surprisingly, he expressed his determination to contribute to the blockchain industry in a long speech. His public relations team also tried their best to persuade us that instead of writing about Sun Yuchen himself, it is better to write about TRON’s business and how Sun Yuchen uses technical means to “make the industry good.” “Brother Sun is an innocent person, why should we pay attention to him personally? What happened to you?"
In the end, the answers to all questions may only exist in his heart.
It's just a pity. When he returned to China after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013 and received financing from IDG Capital to join the blockchain industry, Justin Sun was once the most dazzling representative of post-90s entrepreneurs.
At that time, the tide of the PC era was fading away from the beachhead of the Chinese Internet. People still clearly remember that it was an era when Internet+, traditional local promotion, 2G network, Bitcoin, and mobile Internet trends went hand in hand.
Those born in the 1990s began to shoulder expectations, and some of them became the lights of this era ten years later. Justin Sun was supposed to be one of those bunches. But the turbulent opportunities have made it possible for many young people to bear the word "change", while in the hearts of others, the weight of "choice" has to be added.
Fame and fortune eventually wiped away the young man's edge, and gave birth to various substances that were contrary to warmth, innovation, justice, and tolerance. They penetrated deep into the skin and blood along the bones, and may eventually spread throughout the body.
