Forbes says he has assets of about $8.5 billion.
Doesn’t it sound like there’s way too much, right?
But the point is,
Justin says this figure is the number after Bloomberg and Forbes “discount” the value of the crypto he holds by 70–80%.
He plainly said that,
“When Bloomberg and Forbes calculate my net worth, they discount my crypto assets by 70-80%.”
So why cut it so heavily?
The thing is, Justin doesn’t hold crypto the way ordinary people do.
Especially $TRX.
It’s estimated that he holds more than 60 billion $TRX, or that it makes up a huge portion of the total Supply.
If you just multiply the number of coins by the market price directly, the value on paper would be enormous.
But the problem is,
You can’t sell all of it at the price you see on your screen.
Imagine we hold a stock or token worth $10 billion.
If we press sell all at once for real $10 billion, the price could collapse before everything is sold.
So when media like Forbes or Bloomberg calculate Justin’s Net Worth,
So he doesn’t view it as
“60 billion TRX coins × market price = all of Justin’s money”
But he would be putting in something called a Liquidity Discount.
Or, put simply,
Keep it discounted, because this kind of chunk is too big to turn into cash at full price.
In the case of TRX, the discount is as high as about 75%.
Combined with Crypto volatility and the concentration of the portfolio,
So it turns out that some of Justin’s Crypto might only be counted as real Wealth—about 20–30% of the paper value.
But the part I find interesting is
Justin understands all of that reasoning.
He doesn’t not know that his position is huge, doesn’t not know that crypto is volatile, and doesn’t not know what would happen to the price if he sold a massive $TRX chunk all at once.
But the part he disagrees with is,
He doesn’t see the portion cut by 70–80% as “impaired value.”
For him,
That is the biggest bet.
Justin has been in Crypto for about 14 years, and he almost never tried to move his main Wealth into real estate or stocks the way typical billionaires do.
his logic is pretty straightforward.
If you believe you’re already holding the best assets,
So why sell it to buy the second-ranked asset?
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
then maybe 😂
But if you look from the perspective of the person who built #TRON himself and spends most of his life living in Crypto,
That actually explains his way of thinking really well.
And what’s even more interesting is
Even if we remove $TRX first,
Justin is still one of the biggest $ETH whales.
In the early part of September, on-chain data showed that the wallet associated with him holds more than 243,000 $ETH.
Valued at more than $600 million.
Until the amount of $ETH he holds is even greater than the $ETH held by the Ethereum Foundation on a public tracker.
This one, I think is pretty funny, honestly.
the creator @TRON DAO holds more $ETH than the Ethereum Foundation 😂
After that, Justin redeemed some $ETH out of Lido.
but there are still about 238,000 stETH left.
a value close to $600 million,
Just one position—one ETH position—was so huge that most people can hardly imagine it.
Even though it’s still only a “part” of the entire portfolio.
If you look back at Forbes’s $8.5 billion figures again,
So it becomes interesting right away.
Because this isn’t just a question of
“How rich is Justin Sun?”
But it’s still a question of
“How should we value the wealth of people who hold a massive amount of Crypto?”
If you look at the screen prices,
You could have $20B,
But if you ask,
“Tomorrow, sell everything, and how much money can you put into the bank?”
The answer might be less than half left.
This is why the TradFi world looks at Justin’s position and sees
Liquidity Risk Volatility Risk Concentration Risk
But Justin looks at the same pile and sees the word
Conviction
Someone said,
“Discount it by 75% because you can’t really sell it.”
Someone else said,
“This is the thing I believe in the most.”
And this is the part I like the most about it.
If Justin places a wrong bet
Maybe cutting 70–80% is still too low.
But if he is
The $8.5 billion Forbes estimates today could turn into a number that looks very small in the future.
In the end,
$8.5B is the Wealth that the TradFi world is willing to put in the table.
But the portion that gets cut away by 70–80%,
For Justin Sun,
That might be the part he believes in the most #TRONGlobalFriends