Original author: BlockBeats
My standard for measuring a person is how much money he makes. This is what Justin Sun said in a speech eight years ago when he returned to China to start a business.
He said so, and he did so. Since becoming the legal representative of Peiwo App in 2014, Sun Yuchen, who is pragmatic to the point of being cold, has always had a dream of a business empire in his heart. He wants to make the most of the rules, leverage resources, and win his own game.
And today, eight years later, Justin Sun has finally realized the biggest dream of almost every businessman - going public.
His latest deal is worth $100 million, and it is a US-listed company called SRM Entertainment. Through a reverse takeover, Tron successfully landed on the Nasdaq. The 35-year-old Sun Yuchen is the head of a listed company, and this post-90s entrepreneur has seven or eight well-known companies and projects.
Sun Ges blockchain map
TRON: Justin Sun’s first big bet in the cryptocurrency world
Justin Sun joined the Ripple China team in 2013. During his time as an ambassador, he accumulated his first pot of gold and made valuable connections in the blockchain circle. With these resources, he soon came up with the idea of starting his own business and planned to do something big in the blockchain field.
By 2017, Ethereum had become famous. Sun Yuchen, who had just turned 27, gave up his original social APP and regrouped several Peking University classmates. With the support of the capital giants behind him and the ambition to enter the cryptocurrency circle again, he started the entrepreneurial journey of TRON public chain.
Fortunately, when the TRX token was launched and the ICO was launched, about $400 million was successfully raised. Unfortunately, the era of the 9.4 ICO ban has come, and Chinese project owners and trading platforms have been silent, running away and swearing that from their 18th generation ancestors to their ten thousandth generations of descendants, they will never work in blockchain again.
During that most embarrassing period, Sun Yuchen returned the ICO funds, and the early core team of TRON was almost disbanded. Partners left one after another due to concerns about security issues. Sun Yuchen also admitted: I was almost wasted in the first three years of my six years of entrepreneurship.
The turning point came in April 2019, when Tether decided to issue the TRC-20 version of USDT on the Tron network. Since then, Tron has focused its development on the promotion and popularization of USDT, and this move has almost laid the foundation for 99% of Trons market value today. USDT issued on the Tron blockchain will soon become the worlds largest stablecoin. Today, a few years later, Justin Suns words have come true. The considerable USDT on-chain transfers around the world are supported by Tron.
Data source: DefiLama
The latest on-chain data shows that the transfer volume and Gas consumption of USDT on the TRON network now account for more than 98% of the total public chain. In other words, the on-chain activity of TRON is almost entirely maintained by USDT blood transfusion. For each USDT transfer, users usually have to pay a fee ranging from 0.3 to 8 US dollars. According to current statistics, the daily on-chain revenue of the TRON network has exceeded 2.1 million US dollars, and the annualized revenue has reached 770 million US dollars, most of which comes from the high-frequency transfer fees of USDT. The number of transactions per day exceeds 2.46 million, and the average transaction fee per transaction is about 0.85 US dollars, which is basically consistent with the actual transfer cost of USDT.
As of now, the total market value of Tron has reached 26.96 billion US dollars, surpassing Mixue Bingcheng, firmly ranking at the forefront of the worlds mainstream public chains, and firmly occupying the core position in the circulation of stablecoins on the chain.
BitTorrent’s “Sentimental Acquisition”
In the summer of 2018, compared to creating TRON, Justin Sun did something that seemed more out-of-the-box at the time - he bought BitTorrent, an outdated download tool, for $140 million.
BitTorrent, this name may be familiar to many people born in the 1980s and 1990s: it was born in 2001 and is the worlds first large-scale P2P file sharing protocol. At its peak, about 40% of the worlds Internet traffic was transmitted through the BitTorrent protocol. In the era when the centralized Internet was not yet ubiquitous, BitTorrent almost supported all the imaginations of that generation about downloading freedom.
But for Justin Sun, this is more than just a sentimental acquisition. Taking over the BitTorrent client is just the beginning. What he really wants to do is to blockchainize the entire BitTorrent protocol - to rebirth this old P2P network.
Soon after the acquisition was finalized, Justin Sun launched the BTT token, using the TRC-10 standard, and launched the BitTorrent Speed project. When downloading torrents, users can pay BTT to get faster download speeds; and uploaders can get BTT rewards by seeding.
This idea seems beautiful, but it is not so easy to implement.
As of now, the total circulation of BTT is 986 trillion, the price is about $0.00000068, the total market value is about $670 million, the 24-hour trading volume is stable at around $10 million, and the annualized trading volume exceeds $2.6 billion. Although it is still about 78% lower than the historical high ($0.00000304 in January 2022), this performance is considered satisfactory in todays meme coin era.
Poloniex and HTX: Sun Ge’s “Cash Flow”
For a long time, Justin Sun’s second industry in the cryptocurrency world has been trading platforms. He has two trading platforms: Poloniex and HTX.
Let’s talk about Poloniex first. Poloniex, a long-established trading platform, was first bought by crypto startup Circle for $400 million in February 2018. At that time, Circle intended to make it a compliance pioneer, but it didn’t last long. In October 2019, Poloniex, with the support of the Asian investment consortium and Justin Sun, officially separated from Circle and started in-depth cooperation with TRON, successively linking in multiple directions such as TRC 20-USDT stablecoin, DeFi, and TRON Zone.
On June 9, 2022, Justin Sun made another move, jointly with the Poloniex Reserve and several well-known investment institutions, and officially acquired Poloniex, and directly named its Chinese brand Tron Trading Platform. This acquisition is seen by the outside world as filling the gap of the Tron ecosystems lack of trading platform, and also means that Tron has officially entered a new stage of public chain + trading platform dual-wheel drive. As of now, the daily trading volume of the Poloniex platform is about US$500 million.
In October of the same year after acquiring Poloniex, Justin Sun turned his attention to another established trading platform - Huobi.
He first joined Huobis Global Advisory Committee as a global consultant and announced that he would promote the internationalization of Huobi and the ecological upgrade of HT. Soon, Huobis senior management team was replaced. In the end, Justin Sun acquired Huobis equity for $1 billion through Hong Kong asset management company About Capital and became the actual helmsman of this trading platform. As of now, Huobi still occupies the position of the top 10 trading platforms in the market, with a daily trading volume of $2.4 billion. Huobis platform coin HTX is currently priced at $0.29 and has a market value of $47 million.
Data source: coingecko
Poloniex was first acquired by crypto startup Circle for $400 million in February 2018. In October 2019, with the support of Asia Investment Group and Justin Sun, the trading platform broke away from Circle and cooperated with Tron in many fields such as TRC 20-USDT stablecoin, DeFi decentralized finance, TRON trading zone, etc., making Poloniex go global from North America.
On June 9, 2022, Justin Sun, the founder of TRON, announced that he would join hands with the TRON Reserve and several well-known investment institutions to officially acquire the well-known trading platform Poloniex, and at the same time use the TRON trading platform as its Chinese community brand. With this acquisition, Poloniex will break the situation of the lack of trading platforms in the TRON public chain ecosystem, marking the official launch of TRONs public chain + trading platform dual-wheel drive strategy.
In October 2022, Justin Sun joined the Huobi Global Advisory Committee and announced that he would expand the Huobi Global Station strategic plan in the future, develop international brand promotion, and be committed to the operation of Huobi Token business, and would greatly empower HT. Subsequently, Huobi executives left one after another, and Justin Sun acquired Huobis equity for US$1 billion through Hong Kong asset management company About Capital, becoming the actual controller of Huobi.
As of now, Huobi still ranks among the top 10 trading platforms in the market, with a daily trading volume of US$2.4 billion.
USDD, TUSD and WBTC
In addition to public chains and trading platforms, US dollar stablecoins and packaged Bitcoin are also an indispensable part of Justin Sun’s business layout in the cryptocurrency circle.
USDD, TUSD and WBTC, these three tokens that are highly associated with Justin Sun, are his three trump cards in the stablecoin and cross-chain asset map.
Lets talk about USDD first. USDD is a decentralized stablecoin launched by Justin Sun himself. It is issued and managed by Tron DAO Reserve, and the operating mechanism is also designed by him. In order to ensure that USDD does not lose its anchor with the US dollar, Justin Sun directly controls the most critical assets in the collateral pool - large reserves such as TRX, USDT, and Bitcoin. Whenever the market fluctuates and the peg is in jeopardy, he has repeatedly used his own funds and reserve positions to inject capital to maintain stability. He can be said to be the behind-the-scenes controller of USDD. As of the latest data, the on-chain market value of USDD is approximately US$432 million, and the stablecoin market value ranking is about 10th.
Data source: Coinmarketcap
Lets talk about TUSD. Although TUSD is not an asset under Sun Yuchens personal name on the surface, the evidence and capital flows on multiple chains have basically confirmed his shadow holding position. Since 2023, TUSD has become an important supporting currency for the liquidity of TRON and HTX (formerly Huobi). However, this chess piece is not without risks: TUSD has lost its anchor many times due to custody and audit disputes, and has been targeted and sued by the SEC. In 2024, Binance removed its main trading pair. In 2025, it was completely removed from the EU due to the implementation of MiCA supervision, leaving only the withdrawal channel. In order to save the situation, Sun Yuchen had to spend more than $400 million out of his own pocket in early 2025 to stabilize TUSD himself, further tying this stablecoin firmly to his name. The current market value of TUSD is $492.6 million.
Data source: Coinmarketcap
Finally, there is WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin), an ER 20 token issued on the Ethereum network. It was first proposed in 2017, and the white paper was officially released and put into use in 2019. Its value is pegged one-to-one with Bitcoin; each WBTC has corresponding Bitcoin as a reserve, which is managed by a custodian (currently Bitgo) to ensure that WBTC holders can redeem it for Bitcoin at any time.
Although WBTC is not a project he directly controls, this heavyweight role in the TRON stablecoin architecture is seen by some foreign media as a wrapped Bitcoin directly controlled by Justin Sun. Related reading: Why is the market reaction so strong to Justin Suns entry into WBTC?
Tron DAO Reserve holds a huge amount of Bitcoin for a long time. In order to facilitate collateralization on the chain, the team will convert part of the BTC cross-chain into WBTC to support the stable operation of USDD. It can be said that without WBTC, there would be no safety buffer for USDD on TRON today. According to the latest data from CoinMarketCap, the market value of WBTC is as high as 13.784 billion US dollars, making it one of the largest Bitcoin mapping assets in the world.
Data source: Coinmarketcap
DLive: Brother Sun also has a live streaming platform?
Compared to the previous projects, DLive may be a little unpopular.
At first, DLive was actually a decentralized live broadcast platform built on the Lino chain. After being acquired by BitTorrent at the end of 2019, the entire team and technology stack also migrated to the TRON ecosystem.
Behind this integration is another foreshadowing of Justin Suns content platform + blockchain route. DLive introduced BTFS (BitTorrent File System) for decentralized storage, and BTT tokens were used for anchor rewards and content distribution incentives, forming a closed loop from creation, storage to reward and profit sharing that runs on the chain. At the same time, DLive shares the user account system with BitTorrent, uTorrent, Steemit, etc., allowing BTT to gradually become the universal points in this content ecosystem.
Because of this, DLive once attracted overseas top streamers like PewDiePie to join, and the platforms monthly active users continued to grow, becoming one of the most popular content windows in the TRON ecosystem. However, loose community management also buried hidden dangers.
PewDiePie, a top overseas streamer, was live streaming on DLive
In early 2021, DLive was criticized by the public and regulators because its users live-streamed the U.S. Capitol riots on the platform, leading to doubts about its content review and risk control mechanisms.
Collection ArsenalAPENFT Marketplace
Speaking of Justin Sun, in addition to being a businessman, he is perhaps best known as an avid art collector. He owns a long list of world-class artworks: original works by Picasso, Andy Warhol, Giacometti, and Basquiat. Recently, he bought a banana for $6.2 million, which put him at the top of the topic list.
As a top art collector, it is not uncommon for Justin Sun to own an NFT trading platform.
On March 29, 2021, Justin Sun officially registered and established the APENFT Foundation in Singapore, hoping to use this platform to connect traditional art with the NFT world. APENFTs core mission is very direct: while buying top traditional artworks and NFT works as underlying assets, it also incubates young NFT artists and paves the way for them; at the same time, it will sponsor galleries, hold exhibitions, set up awards, support art reviews and research, and provide a new path on the chain for the global art circle.
In order to make the art on the chain more secure, APENFT selected the dual underlying technologies of Ethereum and TRON, using Ethereum to support smart contracts and global recognition while using TRON to meet the high throughput and low Gas landing needs. BTFS (BitTorrent File System), another early industry of Justin Sun, was also integrated to provide decentralized storage, ensuring that artwork files are accessible at any time, cannot be tampered with, and will not be lost due to single point failures.
Since 2021, APENFT Marketplace has been officially launched. As an NFT trading market based on TRON, it is responsible for digitizing these top artworks, splitting and issuing NFTs, so that users around the world can hold fragmented collection rights. In 2022, Justin Sun spent tens of millions of dollars to buy collections such as Digital Zodiac Animal Heads, Nose, and Reclining Nude Woman with Necklace, and donated them directly to the APENFT Foundation to continue to increase its chips in the field of digital art.
Thanks to the traffic of the TRON community, Sun Yuchens popularity, and the low on-chain handling fee of less than $1 on the TRON network, APENFT Marketplace quickly attracted a large number of creators and players. Sun Yuchen also said that 100% of the handling fees collected by the trading platform will be used to repurchase and destroy platform tokens, plus various speed races, hackathons and other activities, which almost made the gameplay in the NFT field lively.
The current market value of APENFT Marketplace platform token $NFT is 420 million US dollars.
From Tron to BitTorrent, from Poloniex to HTX, to USDD, TUSD, WBTC and other stablecoin cash pools that can leverage on-chain liquidity at any time, plus the APENFT Marketplace, an on-chain art gallery.
It took Justin Sun less than a decade to hone his business empire in the cryptocurrency world into a complete entity spanning public chains, trading platforms, stablecoins, NFTs, cross-chain and international politics.
Behind this seemingly scattered but actually closely interconnected network, judging from the data that BlockBeats can find alone, the market value of the core assets held by Justin Sun has exceeded US$43 billion.
Now, having purchased SRM Entertainment for $100 million, Justin Sun has brought Tron to the Nasdaq through a backdoor listing. Perhaps his greatest confidence comes from the Trump family network that is heating up behind him.
Sun Ges love and hatred with the United States
Sun Ge’s fate with the United States can be traced back to his days as a student at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2011, he was studying for a masters degree in East Asian studies, but he filled his elective courses with investment, entrepreneurship management, and venture capital at the Wharton School of Business. In his spare time, he and his classmates founded Three People Studying in the United States, which turned the lives of international students into a video program. It became popular on Youku, Bilibili, and YouTube, and was even discussed by CCTV.
It was also at that time that Sun Yuchen came into contact with the concept of Bitcoin through Reddit and the campus technology community. Compared with the price of $100,000 today, Bitcoin was quite cheap at that time, only about $10. He began to test the waters with a small amount and gradually increased his position.
At the end of 2013, Justin Sun gave up the opportunity to study in law school and joined Ripple Labs, becoming one of the first evangelists of the Ripple protocol in China. In 2014, he returned to China and obtained investment from IDG to establish Ruibo Tianxia Technology. Since then, despite the ICO ban, the breakup of the entrepreneurial team, running away overseas, and being mocked as the Jia Yueting in the cryptocurrency circle, he managed to survive.
But in the eyes of the Biden administration, Justin Sun has always been a restless trouble maker on the chain.
Around 2020, because Tron was used extensively for black market capital flows, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into him. According to the Wall Street Journal, he did not dare to step into the United States for many years.
In 2023, the US SEC formally filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of manipulating the prices of TRX and BTT and illegally selling unregistered securities. Even a group of celebrities who helped him call orders - Akon, Ne-Yo, Soulja Boy, Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul - were named and fined.
In order to preserve his freedom, he had to look for a talisman everywhere. First, he took on the title of WTO ambassador of the Caribbean island country of Grenada in 2021, in exchange for precious diplomatic immunity. But the good times did not last long. After the change of regime in Grenada in June 2022, Sun Yuchens diplomatic identity was gradually marginalized.
In order to continue to receive immunity, Sun, who lost his Grenada citizenship, was appointed Speaker and Prime Minister in Liberland, a self-proclaimed liberal microstate that claims sovereignty over a small area on the Danube floodplain on the border between Serbia and Croatia.
Justin Sun is well aware that in the United States, where power is changing, nothing is a permanent defeat, and nothing cannot be turned over. The 2024 election may be the best opportunity for him to turn things around.
Long before Wall Streets old financial giants began to test cryptocurrencies and American politicians were still arguing over crypto regulation, Justin Sun had already quietly laid the groundwork. I thought long ago that President Trump would have many positive effects on the cryptocurrency field. After his election, the entire crypto world has taken on a new look, he once told the media.
The Trump family has made a high-profile bet on the cryptocurrency industry and has personally participated in the World Liberty Financial project. From the end of last year to this year, Justin Sun has made two bets totaling $75 million, becoming the big brother on the list, and was therefore appointed by the Trump family as the core consultant of the project.
Sun Yuchens HTX also became the first exchange to list WLFIs new stablecoin USD1. After getting the consultants, funds, and venues, he even bought the largest amount of Trump coins ($Trump) in the market, holding 1.43 million coins, worth about 23 million yuan.
Not long after, Trump officially announced that he would invite the top 220 $Trump holders to a dinner. Sun Yuchen immediately tweeted that he was the largest holder. It is said that Trump only attended the dinner for half an hour, and the second half was almost Sun Yuchens personal show, so many netizens jokingly called it the Sun Yuchen Dinner.
Justin Sun was awarded a gold watch as the largest holder of Trump Coin at the Trump dinner
“I am a bridge between the crypto industry and the president, and to some extent, I may also be a bridge for future communication between China and the United States,” he said in an interview. “My original intention was to establish a good relationship with the Trump family and introduce more people from the traditional world to the blockchain world. We will continue to cooperate with President Trump’s cryptocurrency project in the long term to promote the development and progress of our entire industry.”
Left: Justin Sun; Right: Donald Trump, the eldest son of Trump
For an entrepreneur, apart from the numbers in their account, what they care about most is freedom. Compared with CZ, who paid a sky-high fine of $4.4 billion for free entry and exit of the United States, the price paid by Justin Sun is extremely small.
Therefore, Justin Sun seemed quite happy about returning to the United States. Not only did he visit many places and companies, he also sent several tweets to show his love for Trump.
From a quasi-criminal suspect being pursued by the FBI and SEC to now showing off the gold watch given by the president in the White House, Justin Sun has used what he knows best to mingle in this feast of crypto politics, and the story seems to have reached its climax.
But Brother Sun, who is obsessed with making money, probably has no intention of stopping.
