At the recently concluded Sotheby's auction in New York, Sun Yuchen, an entrepreneur born in the 1990s, bought a banana for US$6.24 million, shocking the entire art world.

You heard it right, this banana is not made of gold, but was bought from a fruit stall that day, with a cost price of only 2.5 yuan.

As the protagonist of (The Comedian) by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, this work, in a very simple form, triggers the public's thinking about contemporary art. However, due to the exaggerated amount and the fact that it is the first time that an auction house accepts payment in the form of cryptocurrency, it is still difficult for everyone to remain calm.

However, the buyer, Justin Sun, seemed unusually calm. He even planned to eat the banana directly to "pay tribute to its status in art history and popular culture."

As a celebrity in the cryptocurrency circle, Sun Yuchen is always accompanied by huge traffic wherever he goes. "Peking University top student", "Asia Weekly cover figure", "Jack Ma's disciple", he has many identities and a lot of names, and his myth of getting rich quickly can always become a topic of conversation in the public opinion field.

Not long ago, he was appointed acting prime minister by Liberland President Vit Jedlicka. Although Liberland is only a micro-country and has not been recognized by the United Nations, Sun Yuchen's entry still caused a stir in the outside world.

But behind the dazzling achievements, Sun Yuchen is full of controversy. He is keen on business means, good at self-marketing and always able to clear risks at a "reasonable" time. Gradually, the "Jia Yueting of the cryptocurrency circle", "the person under border control" and "Sun Ge" have taken off the cloth of fame and fortune. What kind of life does the always crazy Sun Yuchen have? A more real him is presented to the world.

"The Peking University tyrant who is good at preaching"

Who is Justin Sun? In fact, his popularity is not something that happened in recent years, but should have been earlier, back to his student days.

Born in Qinghai, he moved to many places and settled in Huizhou. At the age of 9, he went to Wuhan alone to learn Go. Sun Yuchen's childhood was full of twists and turns, hardship and adventures.

The subsequent setting of this script is not wonderful. After his parents divorced and his mother remarried abroad, he took on the consequences alone, and thus seemed more precocious and rebellious than his peers.

On the road of rebellion, Justin Sun stumbled and walked with difficulty, but he had an obsession with "achievement". In a small town in Guangdong, "famous school" is the fastest way to achieve success. Faced with the reality of only being able to reach the threshold of three books, it is necessary to make bolder attempts. Justin Sun finally set his sights on the "New Concept Composition Competition".

At that time, the New Concept Writing Competition produced many internet celebrities, including Han Han, who later became famous. Justin Sun also had the same "dream" of achieving social status through writing.

But after several submissions were rejected, Sun Yuchen suffered a big blow. After learning from the pain, he changed his mindset and began to study the winning works of previous years word by word, copying them and "submitting what the judges liked." In the end, Sun Yuchen won the first prize of the 9th competition and got the opportunity to participate in the independent enrollment examination of Peking University.

Justin Sun used his "preaching" to open a "gap" in fate, letting in light, and happily got the opportunity for the first turning point in his life.

After successfully entering Peking University, Sun Yuchen, who had tasted the "sweetness" of speculation, could not stop. First, after realizing that it was difficult to excel in the Chinese Department, Sun Yuchen decisively transferred to the History Department. After discovering that the students around him were not in good condition in class, Sun Yuchen made his own calculations, often interacting with teachers before and after class, providing emotional value, and "coincidentally" modifying the scores of many courses after communicating with the teachers.

Later, Sun Yuchen ran for the president of the Peking University Student Union as an independent candidate, but after a crazy campaign, he disappeared on election day and claimed that he was "imprisoned" by the school's Youth League Committee for more than ten hours. In this way, Sun Yuchen accumulated a lot of fans on and off campus, and established his personal IP in that era.

As social media continues to rise, Sun Yuchen began to frequently appear on the platform, discussing social current affairs. After joining Southern Weekend as an intern, he learned from Hu Shi and founded Weekly Review, which became extremely popular.

At the end of his undergraduate career, Justin Sun ranked first in the total score of the History Department of Peking University. This "Peking University bully" also decided to take his talents to the University of Pennsylvania in the United States across the ocean.

After entering the Ivy League School in the United States, Sun Yuchen once again imitated Chen Duxiu. He founded the New Youth magazine in imitation of New Youth, but soon caused controversy due to rumors of plagiarism. Later, Sun Yuchen, who refused to apologize, was rumored to be "ill" and "suicide", and eventually the New Youth magazine had to be closed.

Sun Yuchen, who has always been good at catching bees, never imagined that there would be a day when he would be stung.

But this is just like a cycle.

After encountering the credit bankruptcy crisis, Justin Sun's world was no longer filled with words like literature. He began to frequently attend the Penn Investment Association, take courses at the Wharton School of Business, make friends with business celebrities, and use leverage to trade stocks and cryptocurrencies. Topics such as "wealth" and "money" officially entered his mind.

Although he had made up his mind about the new choice, success was not something that could be achieved just by thinking about it. Americans at that time did not really buy into Justin Sun's ideas.

After failing interviews at a number of investment banks and fund companies, Justin Sun resolutely chose to return to China, the land he once took pride in.

"From 'Jack Ma's disciple' to 'Jia Yueting in the cryptocurrency world'"

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, Justin Sun returned to China to start his own business as the Chief Representative of Ripple Labs (a San Francisco digital payment company) in Greater China.

This open currency exchange platform continued Sun Yuchen's vision of cryptocurrency trading, but after a bull run in Bitcoin, the huge ups and downs of rising and falling made it unable to catch its breath for a while.

During the quiet period in the cryptocurrency circle, Justin Sun acquired the stranger social software "Peiwo App". Its profit-making method is very quick and easy, focusing on anonymous chatting, and girls can make calls for a fee, which also allowed Justin Sun to reap a good return.

But over time, some borderline content began to flood the platform, and Sun Yuchen, who had tasted the sweetness of quick money, was unwilling to put too much energy into it. He often told people around him that this kind of operation-heavy business "was not cost-effective enough." In the end, Sun Yuchen quickly withdrew from it, got rid of the risk, and continued to focus on the long term.

On the other hand, domestic venture capital was in its infancy, and investment institutions with a lot of cash were in urgent need of good projects. If you want to raise more money in the venture capital field, in addition to a good background and projects, image and resource accumulation are also very important. Knowing this, Justin Sun took action quickly and was shortlisted for the first phase of Lakeside University organized by Jack Ma in 2015, becoming the only post-90s.

Later, the identity of "Jack Ma's youngest disciple" was frequently linked to Sun Yuchen. He knew in his heart that the time had come to do something big.

In 2017, Justin Sun officially founded TRON, whose main business is virtual currency on the public chain. It is said that in an internal meeting, Justin Sun once said that TRON would be qualified if it could raise 200 million yuan, 250 million yuan would be barely good, and more than 300 million yuan would be excellent. In the end, TRON raised 600 million yuan and its valuation reached 1 billion yuan, and the team breathed a sigh of relief.

Just when the team was excited, on September 4 of that year, seven ministries and commissions jointly issued an announcement on preventing the risks of token issuance and financing, requiring the suspension of virtual currency issuance and the liquidation of those that had already been issued. However, coincidentally, the issuance and sale of TRON coins had been quietly completed the day before the ban was issued.

After learning about the policy, Sun Yuchen, who was in South Korea, resolutely stated in a live broadcast that he would not return the coins, which shocked the domestic team. According to media reports at the time, the Tron office was completely deserted, and Sun Yuchen flew to San Francisco via Seoul, South Korea a week later. From then on, Sun Yuchen was labeled as the "Jia Yueting of the cryptocurrency circle."

Later, TRON was listed on overseas exchanges and issued TRX coins. At first, the market price of a TRX was only 1 cent, but as the price of Bitcoin continued to rise, the price of a TRX was raised to 2 yuan. Seeing the good market conditions, Justin Sun could no longer sit still. He instructed the Tron team in Beijing to complete the so-called "insider trading" and reap huge profits through a cycle of buying TRX, stimulating the token price surge with good news, and selling tokens.

Gradually, some investors discovered that more than 50% of TRX was stored in the same wallet, and the proportion of "retail investors" in the market was quite low. Some users also found through Sun Yuchen's wallet transaction records that 6 billion TRON coins were exchanged for Ethereum, and Sun Yuchen cashed out about 12 billion yuan through this operation.

The massive sell-off also caused market fluctuations. But before the plunge, Justin Sun always decisively ran away from the "crime scene." He seemed to never care about other people's opinions until he finished the drama that seemed to be able to reap success without much cost.

In mid-2019, according to multiple media reports, Sun Yuchen had been placed under border control and his name was included in the list of people restricted from leaving the country. But soon, Sun Yuchen took his public relations director to the Bay Area of ​​California, USA to post photos to report that he was safe, and live-streamed a 10-minute video to "prove his innocence."

In the cruel business world, Justin Sun always disappears silently just before he should leave, and suddenly appears in the next second just when he should appear.

Between existence and escape, it is hard to find a dagger sharper than him, or a figure more elusive than him.

"Sun Ge's smile can lead to life or death"

It is said that someone had told Sun Yuchen his fortune in his early years, saying that he was not suitable for being pragmatic but for being idealistic. The combination of his idealistic personality and currency was a coincidence.

In this real and imaginary script, not to mention the ordinary "leeks", even the "God of Stocks" Buffett is not immune.

Many people got to know Justin Sun in 2019. In June of that year, he spent $4.56 million to bid for Buffett's lunch, becoming the fourth Chinese to have lunch with the old man after Duan Yongping, Zhao Danyang and Zhu Ye.

The upstart in the cryptocurrency circle met the world-famous "stock god". One made his fortune by speculating in cryptocurrencies while the other sneered at it as "rat poison". The lunch was already full of tension and topics before it even started. As a result, the price of TRON, launched by Justin Sun, rose all the way, with the increase reaching as high as 25%.

But surprisingly, Sun Yuchen canceled his meeting with Buffett before lunch, citing a "sudden kidney stone". After that, Sun Yuchen postponed the lunch twice, and each postponement pushed public opinion and the price of TRON to a new high. So far, the world-famous painting of "Three Plays of the Stock God" has been framed. Buffett probably never thought that he would be stood up by a Chinese "post-90s" like this.

Later, the two met in a hamburger restaurant in a remote village. Sun Yuchen gave Buffett an Android phone with the TRON APP installed. Unfortunately, after that meeting, Buffett did not stop criticizing virtual currencies and later simply canceled the "Buffett Lunch" program.

After upgrading his personality time and time again, Justin Sun’s operations have become more bold.

After the concept of the metaverse became popular in 2021, NFT became the "key" for Sun Yuchen to continuously gain traffic. In addition to spending $10.5 million to buy the first NFT avatar and $15 million in TRX to buy the ape avatar, he also bought a sculpture for more than $78 million.

Later, Sun Yuchen's TRON spent a lot of money to buy about 1,176 square meters of virtual land in the metaverse concept game Cryptovoxels, and exhibited some of the works he bought. Sun Yuchen also donated a large number of NFT artworks he bought at a high price to the APENFT Foundation, which was originally provided with technical support by him.

What is the core purpose behind this drama of buying and selling by oneself and transferring money from one hand to the other? I'm afraid it depends on one's own opinion.

After that, Justin Sun's path seemed to become wider and wider. In 2022, he became a citizen of the South American island country of Grenada and even became the country's ambassador to the WTO.

With the official endorsement, seven tokens created by Justin Sun, including TRON, have become the legal digital currency of the Caribbean island country of Dominica and have the status of legal tender.

However, the two regions mentioned above, the former has an area of ​​more than 300 square kilometers and a population of more than 100,000, while the latter is one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean. It is self-evident how valuable such an identity and breakthrough are.

Later, we saw such an example in a report:

In a live broadcast of endorsing a coin, a netizen left a message saying, "Brother Sun, please don't laugh, I'm so scared." Brother Sun really replied with disdain, "Why would I care about your little tricks?"

The fact is that not long after, all investors who bought that coin were locked in at high prices, and Brother Sun became "Sun Ge". "Sun Ge's smile can mean life or death", gradually spread in the circle.

In real life, someone familiar with Justin Sun once said, "If he were in a disaster movie, Sun would be the one who would do whatever it takes to survive to the end."

His ex-girlfriend recalled that when a group of people were eating coconut chicken, Justin Sun would scoop most of the chicken into his own bowl at the first second it was cooked, leaving himself no chance of missing out.

“People who later dined with him discovered that he did business in the same way.”

Conclusion

Starting from Huizhou, Sun Yuchen became a dazzling star among the post-90s entrepreneurial generation. Surrounded by various controversies, he never returned after leaving for a foreign country.

Looking back, his childhood experiences, his personality traits, and the changes of the times seem to indicate that he can only achieve his wish by any means necessary. However, driven by fame and fortune, there is always a fine line between man and the devil.

What else does Justin Sun want? No one knows the answer.#ETH持续飙升