Justin Sun: 8 Years in the Crypto Space, a Tale of Two Blockchains

Editor's Note: Over the past few years, Justin Sun has almost become the "last man standing" in the crypto circle, whether facing regulatory crackdowns, market crashes, or the downfall of crypto tycoons, he has always effortlessly navigated through, firmly standing at the industry's core. Recently, his name once again took the spotlight, still full of drama.

It started with acquiring a banana for a whopping $6.2 million, a ludicrous "splurge" that made headlines in major mainstream media. More recently, he found himself in high spirits, connecting with the Trump family. Then, yesterday, Justin Sun engaged in a public spat with Huobi's founder, Li Lin, accusing him of concealing financial flaws during a settlement process, leaving a $30 million "funding gap" that he had to cover out of his pocket. Whether it's the financial dispute with Li Lin or the $6.2 million banana, the essence of these stories still revolves around a core theme: wealth, power, and influence. This is a vivid microcosm of the crypto world over the past decade, and Justin Sun has always stood at the center of this grand theater.

The editor-in-chief of the well-known U.S. crypto media CoinDesk was also fired just before Christmas.

What led to his dismissal was an article that was taken down by its parent company, in which the author heavily mocked Justin Sun. Compared to CoinDesk's expertise in "exposing the truth," the article felt more like a "personal attack." The article compiled negative events related to TRON and Justin Sun over the past two years, and then used the title "I watched Justin Sun eat the most expensive banana in the world, and I really don't understand" - after all, who doesn't enjoy seeing the media mock a billionaire? According to CoinDesk employees, Justin Sun reached out in the past, pressured them to take down the article, which directly led to the dismissal of three employees at America's most renowned crypto media CoinDesk, including editor Kevin Reynolds.

From Justin's perspective, this is indeed infuriating. This is because TRON is one of the only two top sponsors of the upcoming Consensus Hong Kong conference in March, and the Consensus conference is one of CoinDesk's main sources of revenue. Anyone facing a situation where they are being insulted while also funding the entity doing so would probably find it hard to remain calm, especially considering that this article did not provide as concrete evidence as CoinDesk's detailed exposé on FTX's issues back in the day.

In 2022, CoinDesk "fired" the first shot towards then high-flying FTX, triggering a resounding "butterfly effect" in the crypto market after an article exposing the balance sheet of crypto market maker Alameda. The crypto market plummeted, many institutions collapsed, and unexpectedly, one of the casualties of the cascading domino effect was CoinDesk itself. DCG (CoinDesk's former parent company) saw its significant revenue source Genesis go bankrupt in the aftermath of FTX's collapse. This ultimately led to DCG selling off its media outlet CoinDesk, with the new owner being the trading platform Bullish. It was Bullish that took down this controversial article and fired CoinDesk's editor-in-chief.

Compared to the Huobi acquired by Justin Sun two years ago, the Bullish trading platform does not seem to be a well-known name. Most people who know Bullish do so because of EOS.

In 2018, there was a company that raised $4.2 billion called Block.one. As the parent company, they created the "veteran star public chain" EOS and launched a year-long ICO. A few years later, Block.one "divorced" from EOS, and with the $4.2 billion, Block.one went on to create a compliant trading platform, which is Bullish.

In the midst of the public chain frenzy at that time, during the same period, Tron (TRON) and EOS, which started their ICOs, were entangled but also appreciative of each other. Back then, the combined market cap of Tron (TRON) and EOS was less than 10% of Ethereum's (the second-largest public chain and cryptocurrency after Bitcoin) market cap. To overcome the Ethereum giant, the best way was to temporarily "ally." In those days, Justin Sun said in an interview: "Tron (TRON) is Liu Bang, EOS is Xiang Yu, and Ethereum is the Qin Dynasty. He has to take down Ethereum first, and then divide the world with EOS."

However, 7 years later, no one could have imagined that today's crypto world order has overturned the understanding of many.

Today, looking at the crypto world with that analogy again, in Sun's words, Ethereum's Qin Dynasty is still standing, while EOS, this Xiang Yu, has already committed suicide. EOS's market cap is only 5% of Tron (TRON). As a public chain, EOS is undoubtedly a failure.

But the parent company behind EOS cannot be considered a failure. What many people do not know is that EOS's parent company, Block.one, is currently the second-largest holder of Bitcoin after MicroStrategy, a publicly listed company that holds the most BTC. They own a total of 160,000 BTC. Not only that, Block.one also holds nearly $22 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds. It should be noted that most of MicroStrategy's BTC was purchased through stock issuance, and as a publicly listed company, MicroStrategy's BTC belongs to all publicly traded investors. On the other hand, as a private company, all of Block.one's assets are truly their own. So, how did the initial funds to purchase these assets come about? Let's go back to 2017 when EOS conducted an ICO and raised $4.2 billion. This was Block.one's seed money. In the years that followed, Block.one did not invest all the money into development but instead accumulated a large amount of assets. The largest expenditure during these years was a $24 million fine paid to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was definitely money well spent. It immediately resolved the issue of EOS raising funds from the public without registering with regulatory authorities. In today's terms, it completely got Block.one on the right track. Until today, this company has become a compliant crypto tycoon without any legal risks.

From the perspective of "Cash Flow is King," Block.one is very successful today. Just like almost no one remembers what MicroStrategy's main business is, even though EOS fell from grace in 2019, Block.one's $16 billion Bitcoin treasury can still thrive today and has launched its own trading platform, Bullish, seeking listing and licenses on Nasdaq and in Hong Kong.

After EOS, the trading platform, the most liquid and profitable track in the crypto world, has become the current main business after its parent company's "five years of lying down and winning." This is a decision that EOS and TRON coincidentally made again.

In 2019, Justin Sun acquired the prominent cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex. After taking over, Justin Sun quickly removed strict KYC enforcement, significantly increasing the platform's user base in this way.

In addition to Poloniex, in 2022 Justin Sun also acquired Huobi for about $1 billion, causing the price of HT (Huobi Token) to skyrocket by nearly 50% in a short period of time.

In July 2021, Block.one launched the Bullish trading platform, initially funded by Block.one with $100 million in cash, 164,000 BTC, and 20 million EOS, and after completing an additional $300 million in strategic investments, Bullish Global now holds over $10 billion in cash and digital asset capital. Noteworthy investors leading this $300 million funding round include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing.

Bullish's positioning has been clear from the start: scale is not important, but compliance is. This is because Bullish's ultimate goal is not to make a profit in the crypto world but to go public on the US stock market.

Prior to officially operating, Bullish reached agreements with listed companies like Far Peak to invest $840 million to acquire 9% of the company's shares and carry out a $25 billion merger, achieving a SPAC listing to lower the traditional IPO threshold.

Bullish's CEO is a professional manager named Farley, who has a strong compliance background. He has been appointed as the COO and President of the New York Stock Exchange, during which time he demonstrated outstanding performance and established deep connections with Wall Street giants, CEOs, and institutional investors. Another noteworthy fact is that during his tenure at the New York Stock Exchange, under his leadership, the exchange created a Bitcoin index and made a private equity investment in a Bitcoin wallet then known as Coinbase.

However, compliance turned out to be much more challenging than they had imagined. After receiving a regulatory warning in the United States, Bullish's original SPAC merger agreement was terminated in 2022, putting the 18-month "listing plan" on hold. Bullish has also started considering alternative compliance routes, such as acquiring FTX, and is currently focusing more resources on Hong Kong, where they have submitted a Virtual Asset Trading Platform License application to the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. Currently, Bullish has 260 employees globally, with 110 based in Hong Kong and the rest distributed in the United States, Singapore, Gibraltar, and other locations.

This ground-up approach to compliance can ensure compliance from the outset, but the drawbacks are also quite apparent. It is inefficient, and while other exchanges like Huobi rapidly attract users globally, Bullish is still struggling with its own trading volume and brand recognition.

Like most exchanges, Bullish has also engaged in some media buying. In a paid special report in The Wall Street Journal, Bullish claimed that "since commencing operations in November 2021, trading volume has exceeded $300 billion, consistently ranking among the top three globally in Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading volume."

However, objective data seems to contradict the advertising claims. According to CoinGecko data, the 24-hour "normalized trading volume" of Bullish (excluding the common suspicious wash trades seen on cryptocurrency exchanges) rarely exceeds $40 million in daily trading volume. At the time of writing, Bullish's 24-hour trading volume is $27 million, which is significantly lower than the reported average daily trading volume of $700 million by Bullish.

Whether it is the industry's largest exchange Binance or the U.S.'s largest compliant exchange Coinbase, their trading volumes far surpass Bullish. How big is the specific gap? Even with Huobi, the trading volume in the past 24 hours is nearly 100 times that of Bullish.

In addition to poor operational performance, another reason for Bullish's slow development is its excessive focus on compliance. The most obvious example is that all stablecoin trading pairs on Bullish use USDC (a stablecoin created through a collaboration between Circle and Coinbase in 2018) instead of USDT (Tether's stablecoin, which is the earliest and largest stablecoin with a current total market capitalization of $130 billion).

Over the years, as USDT has faced increasing scrutiny from the US SEC, the team is considering relocating its headquarters to El Salvador. Its dominance has waned, while the compliant USDC has seen a surge in trading volume in the past six months. According to the latest report from Kaiko, USDC's trading volume on CEXs has been on the rise, reaching a historical high of $380 billion in March 2024, far exceeding the 2023 average of $80 billion. Two well-known exchanges, Bybit and Bullish, account for 60% of the USDC trading volume on exchanges, making them the two largest centralized trading platforms for USDC.

Nevertheless, USDT remains the king of the crypto world. As of the time of writing, the total supply of USDC is 46 billion, while USDT's total supply is 140 billion.

When USDT was first established, Tether Company chose to initially release USDT on Bitcoin's Layer 2 protocol, Omni Layer. However, issues became apparent once users started using it. Omni's speed was still too slow, and the minimum transfer amount on the OMNI version required 4 USDT or sometimes even as high as 10 USDT, which was very uneconomical for small transactions.

Therefore, Tether turned to Ethereum, which was thriving at the time (the second-largest public blockchain after Bitcoin). Ethereum to some extent solved this problem. However, faster speed and lower fees were a perpetual pursuit. Consequently, Tether began issuing USDT on more public blockchains. This led to a scenario where in the crypto industry, everyone saw the initiation of USDT asset issuance on a particular public blockchain as a sign of mainstream industry recognition for that blockchain. After all, USDT is as good as gold, and having so many assets minted on a public blockchain demonstrated that Tether, an industry titan, acknowledged the security and usability of that public blockchain. Moreover, every public blockchain yearned for the authentic on-chain users and fee revenue that USDT brought, with even Tron and EOS realizing this back in the day.

In April 2019, Tether issued the TRC-20 version of USDT on TRON. No one knows how Justin Sun managed to seal the deal with Tether.

Half a year later, as EOS finally launched its mainnet, it also issued 5 million USDT. Optimistically speaking, the EOS version of USDT facilitated further transactions with faster speeds and shorter transaction times compared to TRON. However, the pace of the crypto industry was much faster than traditional industries, and at this fork in the road, a lot can happen in six months.

Comparison of Various Versions of USDT at That Time

Since the deployment of the Tether contract in April 2019, Tron has gradually shifted its focus to the promotion and marketing of USDT, launching activities such as "multi-million-dollar interest subsidies."

At that time, Sun Yuchen and CZ were still in their mutual "honeymoon period," cooperating very well. Big Brother Binance stepped in to support Tron and launched an activity—deposit TRC20-USDT to earn 16% annualized interest. In addition to Binance, several exchanges including OKEx and Huobi announced their support for TRC20-USDT.

Sun Yuchen himself was actively speaking out on Weibo, almost posting TRC20-USDT-related content every day, putting a lot of effort into promoting "Tron's dominance as a stablecoin public chain."

"Soon, the USDT issued on the Tron blockchain will become the world's largest stablecoin," Sun Yuchen expressed full confidence in this matter.

On the other hand, EOS was moving at a slow pace, squandering its unique advantages. Brock Pierce, one of Block.one's co-founders and also a co-founder of Tether, should have taken advantage of EOS's close relationship with Tether.

To the point that early EOS community KOLs were deeply regretful: "I have always attached great importance to USDT and its development. What I was most looking forward to in the early days of the EOS ecosystem was the EOS version of USDT. Unfortunately, Block.one did not push it forward, and neither did major exchanges, until eosfinex was launched on Bitfinex. It was already too late when it was released."

Moreover, when transferring EOS, various resources need to be rented, and a memo needs to be filled out, causing some new users to be puzzled. The user experience is not as convenient as that of Ethereum and Bitcoin, which is also a reason that affects the popularity of EOS.

"With the growth of demand, EOS-USDT may also issue more tokens. However, it will definitely not issue billions or tens of billions of US dollars, because the entire value of the EOS network or the value being transacted is limited." This was said by an analyst at the time.

And so, as the bullets flew for a while, EOS missed its best opportunity to take down TRON. Now, according to data on the Tether website, as of the time of writing, the number of USDT issued on the EOS chain is 85.25 million, while this number is 59.7 billion on the TRON network.

Data Source: USDT Website

On October 22, 2020, an internal member of a certain EOS wallet penned a passionate letter addressing the issues within the EOS ecosystem, titled "An Open Letter to Block.one," which instantly spread across the internet. Within the lengthy and fiery rebuke of Block.one and BM, TRON's founder Justin Sun was unexpectedly "praised": "I highly appreciate Sun Yuchen's efforts in this foundation. Whether or not he is seen by technical experts like BM as copying, at least he is responsible for TRX holders, making real contributions to the Tron public chain, especially in operation, promotion, and support for Tron's project teams."

Today, USDT has truly become the "peer-to-peer digital cash" it was envisioned to be, achieving Satoshi Nakamoto's vision even before BTC. High-ranking officials in Russia have used USDT to bypass trade restrictions and purchase goods. Since the comprehensive sanctions in 2022, Russian companies engaged in various challenges such as commodity payments, equipment and raw material procurement in metals like nickel, steel, and timber. However, USDT pegged to the US dollar has been difficult to sanction, providing support for Russia's international status.

In Argentina in the Western Hemisphere, it has the highest percentage of the population using cryptocurrency. However, Argentinians are not playing the cryptocurrency lottery or hoping to get rich through the next hot token. They usually buy and hold USDT, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar with a market cap of $138 billion, which most citizens consider a safe wealth storage method to combat Argentina's staggering 276% inflation rate.

Cryptocurrency exchange points seen everywhere in Argentina, Image Source: Twone, Uncommons

Not only in Argentina, but also in Turkey, where locals are facing a severe currency crisis due to high inflation, many hold a large amount of cryptocurrency to hedge against the significant devaluation of the Turkish Lira, with USDT being a preferred choice.

A cryptocurrency exchange point in Istanbul, image source Reddit

Furthermore, some Chinese Yiwu foreign traders, after earning foreign exchange, also settle payments using USDT. A research team once conducted a survey in Yiwu and found that almost all merchants received inquiries from buyers about the possibility of using cryptocurrency for payments. Compared to more volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Tether's USDT stablecoin, pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, is convenient for import and export calculations and settlement.

In Cambodia, there is a "gray market version of Alipay" product with official local backing called Huione Pay. Established in 2014, the platform originally focused on foreign exchange and is headquartered on Norodom Boulevard in Phnom Penh, just steps away from the Royal Palace, in one of the most prime locations in the city. In its foreign exchange and escrow business, Huione Pay regards USDT as a key channel.

Huione Group Headquarters

Moreover, USDT has very broad applications in these markets, such as purchasing channels for accessing scientific websites and buying Twitter follower platforms.

For example, the favorite of international students, the pirate video platform Aiyifan, includes USDT payments in its member recharge channels, with its only supported network option being TRC-20, the token format of Tether on the TRON network. Apart from TRON, USDT currently operates on several other mainstream chain networks. However, Aiyifan only supports the TRON network and even offers an 20% discount when using this payment method.

"Aiyifan has a very high usage among overseas Chinese users, which may be the largest pirate video website in the world in terms of user base. In 2020, it had more than 6 million independent users, and after the epidemic, it has witnessed a surge, with the current user base being at least 10 million," as a heavy user of Aiyifan described to us.

Today, a significant amount of USDT transfer demands are being met by the Tron (TRON) network. Until November last year, the Tron (TRON) network had the highest USDT supply among all chains, with Ethereum being the only other chain with a higher USDT supply. Although recently the USDT supply on Ethereum surpassed that of Tron (TRON) for the first time, the difference in data is still minimal, with only a $600 million gap.

Furthermore, according to the blockchain data platform Dune data, on the Tron network, both USDT cross-chain receiving and sending volumes are higher compared to other networks. The daily receiving and sending volume on the Tron (TRON) network is around $7 million, while on Ethereum, it is around $600,000, nearly 11 times less.

Data Source: Dune

While Bitcoin was still far from becoming an ETF-traded financial asset, USDT had already achieved the Mass Adoption often pursued in the Web3 community, with Tron (TRON) becoming the biggest beneficiary after Tether. Related reads: "Redefining Tron: A Dedicated USDT Chain", "Why has TRX's Market Cap Skyrocketed? Tron's Stablecoin Dominance".

In the stablecoin market, Tron (TRON) is undoubtedly the "King in the Middle." Looking back five years from today, this decision has solidified Tron (TRON)'s 99% market dominance.

Big transaction volume naturally leads to higher revenue. In terms of income, TRON's total revenue in 2024 was $2.12 billion, with a single-day total revenue reaching a record high of $21.66 million. In the first week of the new year in 2025, TRON generated $43.74 million in fees, surpassing Ethereum's $30.63 million.

Source: Coin Metrics Network Data Pro

Amid TRON's current glory, Tether has added a touch of gloom to EOS. Last June, Tether decided to cease issuing USDT on EOS, stating that it would prioritize supporting community-driven blockchains, implying that EOS lacked community support.

“One city's splendor is another city's fall.”

After the launch of the EOS mainnet, it did not expand as expected but instead suffered from frequent vulnerabilities, leading to the emergence of a dedicated code audit security industry due to code vulnerabilities. BM arbitrarily altered the EOS "Constitution," triggering a severe credibility crisis in the community. EOS's development took a sharp downturn, with a shrinking user base, key developers leaving one after another, and the EOS token price plummeting from $23 in May 2018 to the current $0.6. Although midway, "gambling and high-risk" applications attracted a large number of users, the value they generated was far below that of TRON, and "gaming" applications failed to gain popularity as they did on Ethereum.

“EOS had already committed suicide in 2019,” a sentiment now shared by many OGs in the crypto community. Mismanagement was also a significant issue for Block.one. Looking from the perspective of BM, the founder of EOS at the time, he saw himself as Emperor Wei Cao Mao, while Block.one's founder BB was Sima Zhao. Senior appointments at Block.one were made solely based on personal relationships, with key positions such as Chief Strategy Officer and Communications Director all held by BB's childhood friends or family members, lacking external challenges and professional perspectives.

The inevitable outcome was BM's departure, leading to a continuous decline in technical development and code quality, and a significant drop in EOS's market performance. Block.one even planned to sell a large amount of EOS, causing dissatisfaction throughout the entire EOS ecosystem, from investors and developers to nodes.

The EOS Foundation, as a community representative, stepped forward to negotiate with Block.one. However, after a month of discussions and exploring various options, no agreement was reached. In the end, the EOS Foundation, together with 17 nodes, revoked Block.one's power and ousted it from the EOS management. Without its parent company, EOS is increasingly resembling a DAO.

After the separation of EOS and Block.one, the EOS community engaged in a years-long legal battle over the ownership of the funds raised initially, but so far, Block.one still retains ownership and user rights to the funds.

How Block.one used the $4.2 billion funds raised during the EOS ICO has undoubtedly been the most pressing question for everyone.

In an email from BM to Block.one shareholders dated March 19, 2019, some answers were disclosed: as of February 2019, Block.one's assets (including cash and invested funds) totaled $3 billion.

Of this $3 billion, around $2.2 billion was invested in U.S. government bonds, referred to in the email as "liquid fiat assets."

For the invested portion of the funds, some public information reveals investments in companies such as the gaming company Forte, the NFT platform Immutable, and a vacation resort in Puerto Rico, among others. Overall, the companies invested in share a common trait: they have little connection to EOS.

Before Bullish became a core business, Block.one still held a trump card: the social product Voice deployed based on the EOSIO smart contract. This was also the only product related to EOS. To build Voice, Block.one invested $150 million, with the largest expenditure being a $30 million purchase of a domain name, with the seller being MicroStrategy, the publicly traded company mentioned earlier with the largest Bitcoin holdings.

However, it seemed to be a curse of fate as Voice's first launch event lasted only half an hour, falling short of expectations and causing considerable disappointment, leading to a drop in the EOS price. Over half a year later, when the Voice iOS version was launched on the Apple Store, various malfunctions and Bdangsug appeared on the same day, and the Voice website displayed "Error 1020," stating the site was "using a security service to protect itself from online attacks." EOS holders were thoroughly disappointed, and Voice finally announced its gradual shutdown in September 2023.

Project Launched by Block.one

The thunder is loud but the rain is small, which seems to be Block.one's consistent style of investment in projects. After that, Block.one did not make any major investment moves and instead chose to completely lie low. Today, Block.one holds 164,000 bitcoins in its account, meaning its net worth has grown from $3 billion in 2019 to $16 billion now, a fivefold increase, making it a master of liquidity management.

While Block.one is hoarding Bitcoin, Justin Sun, on the other hand, is jokingly referred to as the "E-Guardian" trading master. In 2020, Justin Sun's on-chain assets remained around $300 million, but in just one year, this number increased 23-fold to reach $7 billion.

Data Source: Arkm

"If Justin Sun did not have a professional research team, he would be a very successful trader." Someone in the community evaluated him like this: "Both topping and bottoming are Justin Sun's strengths."

In addition to selling over 100,000 Ethereum at a price of $3,674 in recent months, in June to July last year, when the ETH price was around $1,870, he quickly sold nearly 39,000 ETH, following which the price plummeted to around $1,500.

Aside from trading, Justin Sun, who has been active on social media for years, is also an on-chain degenerate, active in the DeFi (decentralized finance) space, excelling in arbitrage and mining. Simply put, DeFi mining is somewhat akin to traditional finance's "high-yield term deposit," where users stake their cryptocurrency in a decentralized exchange's liquidity pool to earn rewards.

In a typical move in 2024, Justin Sun purchased Pendle's PT token in June. In just two days, he invested 33,000 ETH (about $60 million), accurately allocated to different DeFi projects such as Ether.fi, Puffer, and Kelp, each project offering a considerable yield.

Sun Brother's previous position in Pendle, source: Ai Auntie

Using traditional financial market returns as an example, the yield on US Treasury bonds is usually between 3-5%, while bank deposit interest rates are even lower, possibly less than 1%. In comparison, the yields from several DeFi mining projects that Sun Brother has participated in may seem somewhat aggressive to traditional finance people: Ether.fi: By holding to maturity, Justin Sun can earn a 1% return within 22 days, equivalent to an annualized 17.33%; Puffer: This investment has an even higher annualized yield of 18.93%; Kelp: Slightly lower, but still offers a 14.33% annualized yield.

Similar to Sun Brother's investment style, Tron's development appears to be more bold compared to the somewhat laid-back approach with Block.one. Judging from Tron's project progress, Justin Sun has invested a large amount of capital and resources in the past few years, ultimately successfully raising TRX to the "billion-dollar market cap club."

Tron's daily revenue has grown from $1,000 in 2020 to $2 million in 2024, a 2000x increase. In this bull market, there are not many "old-school altcoins" that have hit new all-time highs in price, with only a few recognizable names like SOL, BNB, TON, and OKB. TRX is one of them, even taking the lead to hit a new all-time high before Ethereum.

Today, TRON has a market cap of $20 billion, while EOS has a market cap of $1.5 billion, only 1/3 of the initial fundraising amount.

And the money raised by Tron back then was only one-tenth of EOS's.

Let's go back to 2017, the starting point for these two blockchains.

At that time, the crypto world had experienced the ICO boom and the 94% crash, embarking on the "regulatory clearance year" of cryptocurrencies. The price of Bitcoin fell from a high of $19,870 to around $3,000, Ethereum began preparing for its 2.0 upgrade two to three years after launch, Binance surged to become the world's largest exchange, and Solana was still 2 years away from its debut.

That was 2017, when Ethereum's two main competitors almost simultaneously took the stage. Justin Sun, just past his 27th birthday, abandoned his original social app, found a few classmates from Peking University, caught the tailwind from the big shots, and enthusiastically returned to the crypto world to create the Tron chain; on the other hand, the developer even Satoshi Nakamoto once criticized handed over his first two projects, joined forces with the marketing guru BB, and planned to build the first-generation Ethereum killer and Blockchain 3.0.

In August 2017, TRON was late to start its ICO compared to EOS by two months, but it ended its fundraising nine months earlier than EOS because "September 4th" had arrived. Chinese project teams and exchanges were dead silent, all rushing to run away, swearing that they, their ancestors, and all future generations would never touch blockchain again.

In later recollections, Justin Sun described the scene at that time: "Those demanding refunds outside were like scenes from 'The Walking Dead' and 'Train to Busan.' As soon as the glass door opened, you would be trampled to death." The community demanded that Justin Sun refund the money quickly. Those coming to block the door were armed with knives at their throats, saying, 'Either you spill your blood, or I spill mine, but immediately send back the Ethereum to us.'

That was TRON's most chaotic period. Most of the early team had left, and the partners all resigned due to concerns for their personal safety.

"My 6 years of entrepreneurial journey, the first three years were basically wasted," Justin Sun said. At the end of the ICO, TRON had raised a total of $4 billion, but there wasn't much left after refunds.

One man's loss is another man's gain.

On the other hand, EOS, which possessed both superb technology and idealism, raised $4.2 billion during its year-long ICO. Not only that, they were well-prepared at the regulatory level, with a strong legal team guiding them through. The majority of the ICO participants were Chinese and Korean, with relatively little financing from the US. When eventually pursued by the SEC, Block.one only paid a $24 million fine. They were very lucky because during the same period, Telegram and TON, which were targeted by the SEC, had their $1.7 billion token issuance plan directly halted. As all team members were U.S. citizens, the Chinese 9.4 regulatory incident had almost no impact on EOS.

The starkly different treatment methods made Justin Sun describe his situation as follows, "I just stole a corn stalk, but they brought out a cannon to blast me."

The first year of EOS went smoothly. However, in the second half of 2018, the price of EOS kept plummeting to record lows. Rumors of BM leaving EOS circulated within the community, until BM indeed departed in 2019.

It is said that some large holders were extremely angry at that time, especially those who had followed BM since 2013. Feeling abandoned by BM, some developed a deep resentment and created a Telegram group to discuss how to deal with BM. There were even bounties of 100 bitcoins offered on the dark web to assassinate BM. This made BM quickly rejoin the EOS community's Telegram group, providing frequent advice to the community while avoiding the public eye for quite some time.

In addition to the strong oversight of the US SEC, in recent years, both EOS and Block.one have been cautious and constrained, hesitant to make significant moves.

Speaking of regulation, this is an area where Justin Sun takes some pride: "I am very good at dealing with regulators." After all, apart from Justin Sun, perhaps no one knows the truth and details of that year. How did he deal with the 94 regulation? Was he really under control at the time? Did he go to South Korea upon hearing rumors? How did he finally evade the control?

But in all versions of the story, there is a common theme, that Justin Sun understands regulation very well. On July 25, 2019, Justin Sun issued an apology letter, expressing gratitude and apology, emphasizing "caring for my leaders and regulatory agencies." In addition to this, Justin Sun began looking for a place to settle in various "micro countries" around the world: in 2021, he served as Grenada's resident WTO representative and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary; and was elected as Prime Minister of Liberland (an unrecognized micronation).

Recently, Justin Sun has been on cloud nine.

Unlike the small countries he has dealt with before, he has now connected with the world's largest country, the family of former US President Donald Trump. In November last year, Justin Sun announced that he would purchase $30 million worth of World Liberty tokens, and this World Liberty has a significant background as a DeFi project launched by the Trump family.

For ordinary investors, the appeal of holding World Liberty tokens is not significant, as they cannot share in company profits or resell. It is said that of the $30 million initially raised, 75% went directly into Trump's company account. In comparison to investment, this looks more like a donation, in other words, it is a good opportunity to make a political contribution.

Therefore, when the first batch of World Liberty token sales was fully subscribed and the second round of supplemental sales began, the TRON DAO continued to increase its stake, investing another $45 million, making the total investment $75 million.

The big brother on the list, Justin Sun, successfully became an advisor to the project, and World Liberty also gradually purchased TRON (TRX) tokens to enrich its treasury. There are even rumors that the virtual currency $TRUMP issued by Trump on the eve of taking office also has Justin Sun's shadow, and Justin Sun has remained noncommittal about his personal social media stance.

From the current results, it can be seen that, compared to other big names in the crypto world, Justin Sun has shown remarkable flexibility under regulatory pressure. The fate of FTX founder SBF is destined to be spent in prison, while CZ has temporarily "settled" the issue of future freedom with $4.3 billion and a few months of prison life. Meanwhile, TRON's users are all on-chain, with no KYC form on the trading platform. The only issue that regulators can identify is potential sanction funds and money laundering in its USDT transactions. However, since Tether is the issuer of USDT and TRON only provides the infrastructure, service providers will not face issues before Tether faces regulatory scrutiny.

Eight years ago, Justin Sun returned to China to start his business and proclaimed in a speech, "The standard by which I measure a person is how much money they have made." He not only said this but also acted accordingly. Setting aside the arrogance of a literary youth, Justin Sun has embarked on a practical, almost ruthless, path to "make money."

Today, eight years later, the 35-year-old Justin Sun has assets worth $2 billion in his on-chain wallet, with rumors putting his net worth at $100 billion. He can easily spend $6.2 million on a banana art piece. He has maximized the use of rules, leveraged resources, and won this "bitcoin mooning" game of his own.

Even more intriguing is the constant divergence from TRON by EOS and Block.one at every fork in the road. Today, they hold 164,000 bitcoins worth $16 billion in their accounts.

Thus, fate has achieved a certain absurd "convergence in divergence." TRON and EOS have also scripted a tale of two cities in the crypto era.

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