Tron (TRX), founded by Sun Yuchen, soared nearly 80% this morning (the 4th), reaching a historical high of $0.4313, primarily influenced by multiple factors, including recent political turmoil in South Korea, where the swift response of retail investors in such an active cryptocurrency trading market has once again shocked the market.
According to CoinGecko market quotes, as of the time of writing, the TRX growth rate has converged to 70.5%, with the current trading price at $0.3815 and a market capitalization of $32.4 billion; the DeFi protocol token JST based on the Tron blockchain has also surged by 47%, reaching $0.0585.
Some users on the social media platform X believe that the recent explosive rise of TRX may be closely related to the sudden changes in South Korea's political situation.
On Tuesday evening, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol unexpectedly announced a state of emergency, marking the first declaration of martial law in South Korea in 44 years. However, after a parliamentary vote to repeal it, Yoon Suk-yeol announced the lifting of the state of emergency and the withdrawal of troops at 4:30 AM today (the 4th).
Netizen @toy7594 pointed out: "It seems that during the state of emergency, cryptocurrencies in South Korea rapidly moved to overseas exchanges, as local exchanges were paralyzed for a time. As a result, Tron (TRX) surged rapidly."
South Korea's two major centralized exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, also confirmed that due to a sharp increase in trading activity last night, platform services were suspended for one to two hours.
BTC Markets cryptocurrency analyst Rachael Lucas stated: "The recent surge of Tron (TRX) is partly due to political turmoil in South Korea. As a commonly used transfer token between exchanges, especially in the South Korean market, TRX has become an important tool for traders seeking quick capital transfer."
Rachael Lucas added that since Upbit once accounted for over 80% of the trading volume in the South Korean spot market, once the service was suspended, investors immediately sought alternative solutions to transfer their assets, resulting in a significant increase in TRX trading volume.
However, Presto Research analyst Min Jung believes that although political turmoil may have contributed to the rise of TRX, this alone cannot explain such an astonishing surge. Min Jung analyzed:
This may also be related to the capital rotation phenomenon currently being experienced in the market, where established cryptocurrencies, including XRP, have been performing strongly, while assets like Iota and VeChain have also seen significant increases.
He also mentioned that "there are rumors in the market that Sun Yuchen may control most of the circulating supply of TRX, which raises questions about whether this surge is purely a natural market reaction or if it has been deliberately manipulated."
Sun Yuchen has recently been frequently in the news; he has not only been appointed as an advisor to the Trump family's DeFi project World Liberty Financial, but last month he also purchased the famous work (Comedian) by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan for $6.2 million — the banana taped to the wall — and ate it on stage during a press conference, sparking heated discussions.
