On November 20, the most expensive banana in history was born!
At the Sotheby's auction house in Hong Kong, a banana that was called a work of art was sold at a sky-high price of US$5.2 million. Including handling fees, the total price reached US$6.24 million, equivalent to RMB 45.17 million.
Eight days later, the rich man who took the photo of the banana ate it.
Who is this rich man? He is the famous scammer in the cryptocurrency circle - Justin Sun.
01.
Justin Sun’s Journey to Wealth
Justin Sun, born in 1990, is from Xining, Qinghai.
However, his hometown of Xining may be due to his immigration for the college entrance examination.
In 2007, Justin Sun was admitted to the Chinese Department of Peking University in Xining, Qinghai with a total score of 650; the following year, due to his mediocre performance in the Chinese Department, he transferred to the History Department.
In the history department, Sun Yuchen's GPA ranked first in the major, and he successfully got the opportunity to study exchange in the history department of the University of Hong Kong.
In 2010, he got the opportunity to intern at Southern Weekend.
Justin Sun at Peking University
Note that Justin Sun is a person who is extremely good at packaging himself.
While in school, he tried his best to package himself as a top student, founded the Western Studies Society of Peking University, and promoted the campus democracy movement; during his internship, he used the influence of Southern Weekend to add a sentence "Southern Weekend commentator" at the end of every article he participated in.
By rebelling against the school system and his influence in the media, he was successfully accepted by the Western-dominated (Asia Weekly) and became one of the cover characters, which greatly increased his influence. In fact, this was a token of his allegiance to the West.
In 2011, Justin Sun got the opportunity to study abroad at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States to pursue a master's degree.
University of Pennsylvania
This study abroad brought about a huge change in Justin Sun’s fate. He went from being a superficial person who packaged himself to a highly professional investment scammer.
Since Justin Sun’s mentor is a big shot in stock market investment, Justin Sun also began to learn about the stock market, cryptocurrency, industry trends and other information.
In 2012, he asked his family for some money and made his first investment, buying Tesla shares. As expected, Tesla's stock price soared, and he made a 4-fold profit.
After cashing out his profits, he began to target virtual currencies and bought all of them in Bitcoin. In 2014, Bitcoin soared, and Sun Yuchen's investment made a profit of more than 20 times, becoming a millionaire overnight.
After returning to China, Justin Sun joined Ripple Technology, a blockchain company engaged in virtual currency. The growth of Ripple (XRP) is no weaker than that of Bitcoin, and it once ranked third in the virtual currency market value.
Ripple XRP
In the stock market, he has invested in many companies such as Tesla, 360, Vipshop, etc. In the virtual currency market, he has invested in Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, etc., and made a lot of money.
This is how Justin Sun accumulated his first pot of gold.
However, after witnessing the astonishing growth of virtual currencies, Justin Sun was no longer willing to invest behind the scenes, and he began to step to the front.
In 2017, Justin Sun founded Tron in China, intending to raise the price of Tron and then sell it for arbitrage.
The battle of Tron has made Justin Sun known as a liar in the cryptocurrency circle.
02.
Justin Sun’s road to hype
Justin Sun is a liberal arts student and is not familiar with blockchain technology. What should he do without the technology?
It’s simple. The code of Tron was directly copied. The promotional copy was directly copied from others.
When Tron was founded, there were only 5 people, each of whom held a large number of Tron coins.
In order to promote TRON, Sun Yuchen stepped up his efforts in packaging. With his connections in the investment community, Sun Yuchen successfully met Jack Ma and was recommended as a student of the first class of Lakeside University. At that time, Sun Yuchen was labeled with Jack Ma and Lakeside University in various media.
Jack Ma presents a certificate to Justin Sun
With the support of many celebrities, entrepreneurs and media, Justin Sun’s marketing was very successful.
From December 2017 to January 2018, the price of the first 100 billion TRON coins soared from 1-2 cents to 2 yuan, a hundredfold increase. Sun Yuchen also sold a large number of them during this round of market, cashing in more than $300 million.
Just one Tron cashout made him a billionaire!
But that’s not all. Since then, Sun Yuchen has frequently appeared in the cryptocurrency circle and made high-profile news. Once people have money, more people will listen to what they say.
Every time he promotes Tron, it stimulates price increases, and his team will take the opportunity to cash out.
The most amazing operation was that in 2019, Justin Sun spent 31 million yuan and successfully won the lunch with Buffett. On the same day, Tron soared by 13%.
During the lunch with Buffett, Justin Sun ignored Buffett's investment theory and insisted on recommending Tron to Buffett. Buffett reluctantly said that he would "keep an eye on it."
As a result, Sun Yuchen turned around and told the media that Buffett would invest in cryptocurrencies, causing the price of Tron to rise sharply. As expected, Sun Yuchen's team cashed out again.
Judging from the time, Justin Sun copied the scene of inviting the stock god to dinner in (The Richest Man in Xihong City) and did it again in its entirety.
Sun Yuchen profoundly demonstrated that if you repeat the successful experience of others, you can also achieve success. Everyone saw (the richest man in Xihong City), but only he really invited it.
However, after this, Buffett refused to sell "Buffett's lunch" to the Chinese, and the stock god was also afraid of being cheated.
This time, the banana auction for 41 million yuan also used the same hype routine.
In the cryptocurrency market, there is a meme coin called BAN that uses Cattelan banana as its background and is listed on Binance contracts.
BAN Trends
9:16 on November 20th was the critical moment of the auction. Before 9:16, the price of BAN suddenly rose rapidly, soaring by about 26%. This scene made everyone shout that Brother Sun was awesome.
However, after the 26-point auction was successful, BAN not only gave up its gains, but also plummeted by 21%. This scene seemed familiar, and Sun Ge was still the same Sun Ge.
It is still unknown how much the leeks cost from the 45 million bananas.
Sun Ge abused Leek countless times, but Leek still treated Sun Ge like his first love!
It is worth mentioning that China had already banned virtual currency transactions in 2017. At that time, a large number of domestic virtual currency companies fled to Hong Kong, and Hong Kong became the forefront of cryptocurrency speculation in China.
In the second half of 2022, Justin Sun spent US$1 billion to acquire control of Huobi and took control of Huobi.com, one of the three major cryptocurrency websites.
Sun Yuchen is now worth more than US$2.4 billion, equivalent to 17 billion yuan. Among the overseas Chinese in the cryptocurrency circle, he is the second richest person, second only to Zhao Changpeng.
As the saying goes, people are afraid of being famous just as pigs are afraid of being fat. In Hong Kong and overseas, Chinese regulators can’t do anything to Justin Sun, but it’s different for Americans.
03. The United States wants to take action against Justin Sun
In 2022, US media reported that US regulators launched investigations into the two major cryptocurrency platforms, Huobi and Binance. Sun Yuchen was suspected of money laundering, cashing out, and inducing celebrity investments in virtual currency exchanges, and was investigated by the FBI.
In March 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Justin Sun, accusing him of illegal securities sales, fraud, and market manipulation, and also filed charges against his celebrity crypto supporters for separate violations.
Justin Sun is sued
Whether Justin Sun manipulated the market and defrauded investors, those who know will know.
However, at this critical moment, the U.S. SEC suddenly withdrew the lawsuit against Justin Sun.
This is not because Justin Sun is so powerful, but because the SEC is focusing on Binance’s Changpeng Zhao.
Zhao Changpeng eventually paid a fine of 53.1 billion yuan before he was released from a US prison.
The 53.1 billion yuan gave the US government the impression that wealthy overseas Chinese are all top fat sheep and that it would be a huge profit to slaughter one of them.
Zhao Changpeng
After Zhao Changpeng, who will be the next? Without a doubt, it is Sun Yuchen, the second richest Chinese in the cryptocurrency circle who is also under investigation and prosecuted.
What's more, in order to avoid regulation, Justin Sun became a citizen of Grenada, a small island country in the Caribbean, in 2021. According to regulations, he has voluntarily renounced his Chinese citizenship, and the Chinese government will not protect him.
Lao Guan believes that Zhao Changpeng was caught directly in illegal transactions, and the United States dealt with him without saying a word; but Sun Yuchen is often active on the Chinese Internet, and mainly harvests Hong Kong investors, so it is not appropriate for the United States to take action against him for the time being.
What is America’s best solution?
It is to allow Sun Yuchen to continue to reap Hong Kong investors and carry out financial reaps on the cryptocurrency products controlled by Sun Yuchen. Wall Street can do this.
Simply put, Justin Sun is cutting the leeks of Chinese investors, and Americans are cutting the leeks of Justin Sun, forming a perfect closed loop.
Now is not the time to close the net on Justin Sun. Without him, there will be one less general who will cut the leeks of the Chinese people!