Justin Sun: Blockchain patient

Author｜Liu Na, Wang Yuchan‍‍

Escape

This summer we tried to find Justin Sun in Singapore.

People who are familiar with him said that he lives in a three-story villa with a swimming pool on Sentosa Island in the south of Singapore. Justin Sun spends 90,000 Singapore dollars (approximately 480,000 yuan) per month to rent luxury homes.

Through the two-story floor-to-ceiling window in the villa, you can see a suspended swimming pool. Half of the pool leads to the edge of the mansion and half to the underground garage.

The underground floor is an art collection. Sun Yuchen’s former assistant revealed that his personal collection is already worth more than 1.2 billion yuan. Including the 1932 Picasso masterpiece "Reclining Nude with a Necklace" worth $20 million, Andy Warhol's "Three Self-Portraits" sold at Christie's in London for $2 million, and a Swiss sculptor worth $560 million Giacometti sculptures and other works. ‍

The sun in Singapore is dazzling. The streets here are quiet during the day, with the occasional few people in suits and leather shoes walking in a hurry in the heat. The climate conditions here are indeed not as good as California, where he once lived for a long time, but he left there before the rumors of being investigated by the FBI leaked out.

Before we went, Sun Yuchen expressed to us many times that he was very willing to talk, "We will finalize a time for you to come to Singapore within this week", "I hope not "The reception will be poor", but he kept delaying the meeting time and repeatedly broke the deadline he set.

We decided to fly directly to Singapore. Standing on the street, I sent him a WeChat message, "Would you like to treat us as a landlord and treat us to a cup of coffee?"

"Let's make an appointment!" Sun Yuchen almost said Immediately reply to the message and say, "I'll be here this week, it depends on your time!"

"How about tomorrow afternoon?" After this message was sent, I never received it again. his reply. Just like Farage searching for Marilyn Monroe on the streets of New York more than 60 years ago, we did not see Justin Sun in the end.

He once again completed a classic "escape performance", first making a heartfelt promise, impressing the other party with enthusiasm, and then escaping from an environment that was not so favorable to him - - Just like when he disappeared from the election for Peking University Student Union President, turned down the Buffett lunch he had photographed, cashed out from TRON and Huobi, and left China and the United States one after another after releasing negative signals at the regulatory level.

There is no doubt that Justin Sun is the most controversial "entrepreneur" in contemporary China. He founded the blockchain platform Tron and took over Huobi, but because of his crazy harvest, he became one of the most hated people by blockchain investors.

In the past ten years, from a "niche money printing machine" to a "public sickle", the Chinese people's impression of "digital currency" has drastically changed - Sun Yuchen is among them Indispensable contribution. Today, "blockchain" has long been eliminated from the popular vocabulary in the Internet circle. The people who pursued it back then have "survived the dangerous shoal of digital currency, walked out of the garden of the metaverse, and are rushing towards the light of the AIGC large model." future". But history will remember it all. A hundred years later, when our descendants re-examine the rise of blockchain in China, Sun Yuchen’s name will definitely be mentioned.

The madness of an era is condensed into the madness of one person. To capture Justin Sun is to capture the Chinese history of blockchain.

Now, when we mention Justin Sun’s name, some people describe him as a “bad guy who does all kinds of evil”, while others think he is a “complete bastard”. Some people even say that they are waiting for the day when he will XX (the word is hidden here because of violence) on the streets.

Among the many Justin Suns, which one is the real him?

"We talked to a lot of your old acquaintances recently, and they all said you were a jerk. So, are you?"

In the phone call before he fled, we asked him this. Sun Yuchen struggled for a while and replied:

" I feel that many of the people who criticize me are people who have not made any money from me,” he said.

This is a typical Justin Sun answer. On people's mobile phones and computers, he is good at playing a brilliant person in various crazy ways, but in the real world, he habitually avoids serious problems.

We tried to add a little "analytical" footnote to his various actions, such as his growth experience, the industry he was in, and the psychological impact of these experiences. state. Just like the opinion of the famous psychologist Post in his article in "Psychopathology", well-known people in various fields are often more likely to suffer from mental illness.

Although on the phone, Sun Yuchen emphasized that his state and mood were busy and positive, but his past behavior is difficult to be understood by people. "normal, healthy" adults.

He pursued some things excessively and endured some things excessively. After repeated tearing and tearing of cells and meridians, some abnormal characteristics begin to emerge, eroding trust, freedom, and even everything except money, leaving behind loneliness.

In the blockchain industry, Justin Sun is a veritable boss. People familiar with Justin Sun say that his worth is likely to be as high as tens of billions of dollars. But because of his existence, some bad trends are spreading at a faster pace - greed, selfishness, fear, and fame-seeking.

A strange "patient"

When you realize When there is something "not quite normal" about this person, it is often observed from a series of inappropriate things.

When outsiders see Justin Sun, he is often humble, polite and sincere in speech. "In the winter, Justin Sun also wore a suit and had oily hair, looking decent and appropriate." Many people recalled, "This dwarfed the reporters wearing heavy down jackets." "He doesn't look like someone from the Internet circle, but like someone from the financial circle."

Sun Yuchen seems to be a different person in the office, always showing his irritability. "X your mother, you f*ck" is his catchphrase. A former Tron employee said that Justin Sun often cursed people, "You guys know how to budget all day long, and you moms only spend money if you don't make a dime."

Even in a city like Singapore that values ​​work-life-balance, where getting off work means not answering work emails, Sun Yuchen often assigns tasks late at night and requires employees to Reply immediately.

But when others are busy, he often takes time off. Even when he is in a meeting, Justin Sun will refresh social and video software over and over again, almost obsessively searching for his own name on it - checking all topics related to him, reading comments, and many times he will curse people in person.

Not long before accepting our invitation, this "bastard" as everyone calls him went to the Hong Kong Web3 Conference. Upon learning that Justin Sun was going to give a speech, a blockchain industry group launched a "reward" crowdfunding campaign, "finding someone to come on stage and give him two 'big bucks'." The news quickly reached Justin Sun's ears. In a screenshot of WeChat circulated in the circle, he "warned" the security team, "If I get a big blow, you are the only one I will ask."

Just in case, he set his security budget for the day to 80,000 Usdt (a virtual currency), which is equivalent to nearly 600,000 yuan in RMB.

In hindsight, the episode was probably just an expensive piece of marketing. Justin Sun’s friend, Du Jun, co-founder of Huobi and founder of Node Capital, told us that Justin Sun will never give up any means of marketing himself.

Click on any post about Justin Sun, and you will see a lot of criticism, ridicule and even curse words in the comment area. There is a comic contrast between his reputation and his positioning of himself.

His public relations team asked the media: "Whenever His Excellency Sun Yuchen himself is mentioned, his four positions must exist and none of them can be missing." They are, "Grenada His Excellency Mr. Justin Sun, Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, member of Huobi Global Advisory Board, and founder of TRON."

This inevitably reminds people of Daenerys Targaryen, the "Dragon Mother" in "Game of Thrones". Every time she appears, her name must be Read for three minutes: The daughter of the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen, the last descendant of the ancient Targaryen dynasty, the legal heir to the Iron Throne, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Breaker of Chains, the Queen of Meereen, the Dragon King Mother...

But as we said - although this Excellency insists on respecting him from the outside world, the outside world insists on humiliating him in return.

At the end of the last century, artist Andy Warhol predicted, “In the future, everyone will be a celebrity for 15 minutes. "Now, this sentence has been reflected in reality. But Sun Yuchen has made people see that celebrities are not always what you imagine.

 "After getting rich , many people began to enjoy life. "A blockchain exchange practitioner said that the "big guys" who are famous in the industry are extremely low-key and even spend a lot of money to hire private detectives to help hide their whereabouts.

But Justin Sun is still hungry for exposure. At the beginning of this year, a new book "Blockchain and the New Digital World" was released, which seriously introduced the impact of blockchain on the digital age.

The author is signed by Sun Yuchen, but many former employees of Huobi confirmed that they hired graduate students as writers, and the "ghostwriting fee" was about 200,000 yuan. Because many publishing houses were unwilling to accept it, the public relations team ended up paying for it themselves. Published.

Whether he is personable, violent and rough, or conscientious, these labels are not in line with the public’s perception of Justin Sun. In many people’s perceptions Here, he should be sinister and cold-hearted.

If we believe that Sun Yuchen's state when getting along with people around him is closer to his true colors, then A reasonable inference is that his impression in the minds of the public is the result of his many years of deliberately playing the role.

It's like a person who "suffers from a fever" He is a "confused" person who insists on making remarks for many years that are not consistent with common sense and do not conform to his level of knowledge, including but not limited to: Luo Yonghao was restricted from high consumption, and he issued an annual salary offer of one million to the former; when Xiaopeng users defended their rights, Sun Yuchen posted on Weibo that he would personally subsidize 1 million yuan to help users hire lawyers; after Liu Qiangdong’s Mingzhou incident, he had another whim and claimed that he wanted to invest 100 million to make a movie. He had already thought of a name, called "Mingzhou Chronicles".

This gentleman seems to have some obscure elements that are hard to explain. It is difficult for you to clearly see the consequences of approaching him. Just like geniuses and madmen, there are only two differences. There is a thin line between "sickness" and "health" in an instant.

No one is sick all the time, but Sun Yuchen's madness makes him look like Always like a patient.

Only "patients" can get rich in the blockchain

Sun's ex-girlfriend recalled that when a group of people were eating coconut chicken, Sun would scoop most of the chicken into his bowl at once as soon as it was cooked, so as not to give himself a chance to eat it. " Later, people who ate with him found that he was like this in business."

Many people know Sun Yuchen because of an "illness" and a lunch started.

In 2019, Justin Sun photographed Buffett having lunch. The subsequent plot has been reported by countless media - before leaving, Sun Yuchen announced that he would cancel the meeting with Buffett due to a sudden kidney stone. After that, Sun Yuchen publicly postponed the lunch meeting many times.

Every cancellation and postponement is a double boiling of public opinion and the price of Tron currency. The mysterious style of play has achieved complete victory.

Sun finally met Buffett at a burger shop in a remote rural area in the United States - an insider told us that the two of them ate Burgers instead of the steakhouse classic that is Buffett's lunch. Justin Sun gave Buffett an Android phone with the Tron APP installed on it. After the meeting, Justin Sun excitedly told his assistant that they had a great conversation and that Buffett was already a virtual currency holder.

We have no way of knowing whether Buffett and Sun Yuchen met too late. What is certain is that after that meeting, Buffett criticized virtual currencies many times, and he also criticized virtual currencies in the coming year. The "Buffett Lunch" event was completely discontinued.

What an embarrassing fact.

When Buffett boarded the private plane to leave, I wonder if he was reciting his famous sayings silently in his heart, feeling afraid of Sun Yuchen's greed. But Justin Sun, an escape artist, has his own reasons for being able to beat Buffett by relying on an empty city plan. “Not everyone is as morbidly crazy as he is,” his former assistant told us.

Since he was a teenager, Justin Sun has shown his "weakness" more than once, but he has always been able to cleverly get what he wants.

Sun Yuchen, who was born in 1990, started an alternative life soon after entering Peking University. He had radical ideas and always publicly criticized the school's management system.

Due to the large number of supporters, he ran for president of the Peking University Student Union as an independent candidate. It’s the same thing that starts with a crazy campaign and then disappears on election day. The only difference was that the reason for Sun's disappearance that time was not illness. He claimed to have been "imprisoned" by the school youth league committee for more than ten hours.

The "victim" image followed, but it allowed him to accumulate more fans. Later, with the rise of Weibo, he began to follow the example of "public intellectuals" and "big V" to discuss current social affairs, and frequently called for "saving the country."

Because he was worried about being expelled from Peking University, Sun Yuchen applied for graduation a year in advance, and then entered the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. While in the United States, he continued the style of the domestic period, founded a magazine, and wrote spicy commentary. But it didn’t take long before his article was pointed out as being seriously plagiarized, and many people came around to it.

Amidst the controversy, Justin Sun was "sick" again, and rumors of suicide circulated, which eventually ended with the magazine closing.

When he was disheartened, Justin Sun joined the Penn Investment Association, hoping to meet some wealthy Americans. There he tried to leverage stocks and currencies, entered the blockchain industry, and experienced the fun of making money.

This is where a twists and turns story unfolds. In 2013, he returned to China and established Ruibo Technology, the predecessor of TRON, after receiving support from IDG Capital.

The popularity of the young Justin Sun is somewhat marked by the times - the Internet has extended the youth of that generation. "Because of the attributes of young people, their out-of-the-way voices are more It’s easy to be heard,” said a person who had contact with Sun during his time at Peking University. It was not until a few years later that some people began to reflect, Is using radical means to gain fame a model worth learning from?

But Sun Yuchen obviously had no time to reflect, and his radical playing style was quickly brought into a new world. There, he put away his "weak" side and began to show a "sick" smile.

In the blockchain industry, Justin Sun is considered an "early riser". But no matter whether you join this industry sooner or later, you can't escape the fear caused by two "viruses" - one is called "shrewdness" and the other is called "snobbery".

On the brutal killing field of virtual currency, there is almost no sharper sickle than Justin Sun.

In the early years, there was a technical expert named Xu Baolong in Justin Sun’s Tron team. Every time before Justin Sun announces good news, Xu Baolong's team will quickly buy. When the price soars, they quickly sell short to make profits.

"Tron" was banned shortly after its establishment in 2017. On September 4 of that year, seven departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China and the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the "Announcement on Preventing Financing Risks of Token Issuance" (hereinafter referred to as the "94 Announcement"), comprehensively halting the issuance of virtual currencies and requiring all issued virtual currencies to Do a cleanup.

However, Justin Sun "happened" to complete the issuance and sale of TRON coins the day before.

Sun Yuchen, who was abandoned by the policy, at least still has users. But soon, users came around.

In November 2017, Tron landed on overseas exchanges and issued TRX coins. At first, the market price of one TRX was only 1 cent. But since the end of November, as the price of Bitcoin continued to rise, the market picked up. By December, the price of TRX was raised to 2 yuan.

Subsequently, someone discovered that more than 50% of TRX was stored in the same wallet, and the proportion of "retail investors" circulating in the market was only 9%. Someone else discovered that Justin Sun's wallet transaction records showed that he sent 200 million TRX to trading platforms such as Binance to exchange for Ethereum every day. This behavior lasted for 19 days. Afterwards, someone did some calculations. According to the currency price at the time, Sun Yuchen cashed out approximately 12 billion yuan (some say that Sun Yuchen only cashed out 2 billion yuan).

Large-scale selling soon led to a stampede of runs, and the price of TRON instantly plummeted by 20%. Once again "coincidentally", Sun Yuchen ran before the plunge.

He can always be the fastest one, just like when he eats coconut chicken.

Ten months after Tron was established, Justin Sun claimed that his worth has reached tens of billions. But then the wealth of a group of people disappeared, leaving only self-mockery, "Brother Sun smiles, life or death is unpredictable."

The origin of this sentence goes back a few years. Once Justin Sun did a live broadcast and endorsed a currency. Some netizens left a message in the live broadcast room, "Brother Sun, don't laugh, I'm so scared." Sun Yuchen dismissed it, "How can I like your three melons and two dates?"

A few months later, investors who bought that coin were all Trapped, "the tragedy of the situation can only be described as losing all money."

Even after he later took over the Huobi business, Justin Sun did not give up the "three melons and two dates" of retail investors. Many people in the industry accused us that Sun Yuchen had repeatedly used Huobi to "prick the needle" - this is also called "directional blasting". He used methods such as server delays, downtime, and modification of K-lines to mislead investments and manipulate currency prices. The user maliciously liquidated his position.

"The money he makes from 'needling' is not enough for his hourly wage, but he just wants to make it." Said an investor in the currency circle who had contact with Justin Sun.

As fear spread, users began to flee the Huobi Exchange, and this supposedly strongest barrier gradually collapsed.

Everything is like the reincarnation of Sun Yuchen's road to fame at a young age. He once again completed a feat that seemed to be achieved without too much cost and price. But success is difficult for most people to achieve. In early interviews, he mentioned many times that the family education he received since childhood was that no matter what he did, he "must win."

The road to victory is full of ups and downs, and the hardest thing is to break through one's "heart." Not everyone can do all kinds of "ignoring".

Sun Yuchen’s choice would have no different outcome if he changed to another industry.

In addition to blockchain, he once also had a "accompany me App". It was a social networking software for strangers that he acquired shortly after returning to China. It focused on anonymous chatting. Girls could choose to make paid calls. The profit model was simple and crude.

"Stay With Me" has made Sun Yuchen very profitable, but the soft porn service policy has huge risks. A few years later, Sun Yuchen closed "Stay with Me" and told people around him that this kind of operation-focused business was "not cost-effective enough."

But this is the closest to "normal" entrepreneurship that Justin Sun has ever had. Even if "lust" is the same as speculation in virtual currency, it is valued because it makes people Addictive stuff.

An unconfirmed detail is that an old acquaintance of Sun Yuchen said that someone told Sun Yuchen's fortune in his early years, "Said that he is not suitable for pragmatism, but suitable for Retreat”. After emerging in the blockchain industry, he once told this matter to others as a "things are inevitable" argument. Justin Sun's Douyin has 420,000 fans, and TRON, which he founded, has hundreds of millions of accounts (as of 2022). Perhaps the encounter between the retreat master and virtual currency is really a coincidence of history.

Disease Outbreak: The Death of Trust

Winter 2017 , in a courtyard in the East Second Ring Road of Beijing, in a KTV that is not open to the public called "I If", the warm-toned lighting is ambiguous. While drinking and drinking, Sun Yuchen, a rising star in the currency circle, had a very speculative chat with Xu Zijing, a celebrity in the currency circle at the time.

Xu Zijing, nicknamed "Martian", was a dazzling star in the blockchain industry at that time. At that time, the Martian currency HSR was also one of the hottest currencies.

According to a person who was very close to Sun Yuchen, Sun Yuchen spent the whole night talking about his ideals, the future of HSR and Tron currency. Act like you like him very much." At the end of the conversation, "the two decided to exchange coins," the above-mentioned person said. "Afterwards, Justin Sun said that the Martian exchanged 140,000 HCASH (HSR) for 333 million TRON coins, and the two completed the exchange on the spot."

The happy party lasted until two o'clock in the morning, and Sun Yuchen said that he was going back to the company. When Xu Zijing sent him to the door of the courtyard, he did not forget to praise Sun Yuchen's dedication and diligence with the people around him.

Then - according to the scene described by the above-mentioned person - Sun Yuchen went out, turned a corner, leaned against the wall, and bought all the HSR that he had just exchanged for Xu Zijing at the entrance of the alley. sell off.

According to people familiar with the matter at the time, Sun Yuchen made nearly 30 million yuan by selling HSR. This directly caused the price of HSR to plummet. When Xu Zi woke up after a toast the next day, HSR had already triggered a stampede decline, "This coin has no power to recover."

This incident was not publicly reported. The above scene was described by many people familiar with Sun Yuchen. When Martian Xu Zijing asked 36Kr whether the incident was as described above, he chose silence.

This seems illogical at first glance. Why do Martians trust Justin Sun so much? To outsiders, this is like exchanging U.S. dollars for Zimbabwean currency, or exchanging Alibaba's equity for a start-up company.

But people in the industry are not surprised. Mutual currency exchange and endorsement became very popular in the currency circle around 2017. "The Martians have too many coins, and Sun Yuchen has a lot of titles, which is also very convincing to others." Perhaps more importantly, "the people who exchanged coins with the Martians before had a moral bottom line, which made him overestimate human nature."

"If it were in a disaster movie, Brother Sun must be the one who does everything possible to survive until the end." People who are familiar with Justin Sun say that he is selfish and greedy enough.

These two personalities have indeed helped Sun Yuchen build his wealth. But in the long run, it is like two kinds of defects, which eventually penetrate into the blood and help the subject wear away an important emotional relationship-trust.

"He has no friends or allies in the world. Once there are differences in cooperation, he will definitely cheat the other party, and he will be secretly happy because he cheated the other party. It will also create a sense of intellectual superiority." Ma Jiajia, Justin Sun's only public girlfriend, told us.

What's worse is that people saw a new sample - at the end of the known story, selfish and greedy people were not punished.

Liu Ming, Sun’s senior at Peking University and an early Tron employee, is also one of his old enemies. Tron’s first white paper was written by Liu Ming.

In a phone call with us, Liu Ming claimed that in addition to the white paper, there was also the proposal report of Justin Sun's graduation thesis (on blockchain) at Hupan University. "I wrote them all, but Sun Yuchen later claimed that they were his own works."

In his opinion, he is one of the founders of Tron - when the company was preparing to launch the ICO, there were only 5 people in the team, and no one except Liu Ming understood it. Blockchain and ICO. He recalled that when the roadshow went to Changsha, his colleagues in Beijing called him and asked him: "What is ERC20?" ERC20 is the standard for issuing tokens on the smart contract platform Ethereum. His colleagues had no idea about this concept, which surprised Liu Ming.

But this "veteran" soon almost went to jail. When the "94 Announcement" was released, Sun Yuchen was in South Korea. He stated in the live broadcast that the proceeds obtained from domestic currency issuance would not be refunded. This means that employees who remain in the country face huge legal risks. "We are all going to jail. He doesn't care about our situation and feelings at all."

In the end, under pressure from Zhao Changpeng, He Yi and others, the founders of Binance, Sun Yuchen returned the Bitcoins obtained from the ICO. However, because the private placement part has been cashed out, industry insiders speculate that Justin Sun used the money from selling the "Martian" HSR coins to fill the gap.

But the former partners eventually parted ways. According to Liu Ming, when the Tron project is successful, it will be very valuable. Liu Ming hopes to realize the share of the shares that he had verbally negotiated with Sun Yuchen. "I don't want more, just about 5%." But Sun Yuchen refused, and the two broke up on bad terms.

Changpeng Zhao, the “eldest brother” of the industry who once had some personal relationship with Justin Sun and the founder of Binance, cannot escape the selfish side of the former.

In May this year, Binance launched a mining project, and users can use BNB and TUSD (a stable currency) to mine.

On the same day, Justin Sun transferred a huge amount of TUSD into the mining project in ten transactions, which resulted in a large part of the mines being poached by Justin Sun - a disguised form of exclusion. Drive out other mid-sized players and small players. Zhao Changpeng then mocked Justin Sun on social networking sites, and the latter responded remotely, saying, "I made a mistake, I added a few more zeros."

"This kind of thing is embarrassing for everyone. When making money, Brother Sun doesn't look at who the other party is, and the bottom line is very low." A Tron said the former executive.

Controversy arose as a result, and some people who could still understand Sun Yuchen began to switch sides. They expressed confusion about 36 Krypton and why Sun Yuchen still showed greed when he was already so rich. In fact, on the other hand, being greedy enough may explain the path to "success" of Justin Sun - in his early years, he told the media who came for interviews many times that how much money he made was his only criterion for measuring success.

"Sun Yuchen is like a drug addict who is highly addicted to making money because he has no way to get any happiness from anywhere else." Ma Jiajia told us.

When his former friends have turned against him, money can at least buy employees and a community of interests - they are the few of this "patient" besides wealth. Not much of a guarantee, but now Justin Sun is losing even them.

A Tron employee accidentally discovered that he had millions of yuan worth of digital currency on Binance. Then everyone discovered that "it was Justin Sun who used the identity information of multiple Tron employees to open an account on the Binance trading platform, and transferred the Tron coins he controlled into the account to sell them for cash." Outraged, the employee eventually quit.

It may only be a small amount of money that ruins the labor relationship. In October last year, after Justin Sun became a member of the Huobi Global Advisory Board and gradually took over Huobi.com, he began "disguised layoffs." According to information in the Huobi employee rights protection group, the methods include "not reimbursing employees for advance travel expenses, increasing the number of excessive salary deductions, and not receiving compensation even if they are laid off."

In contrast, in 2019, Huobi founder Li Lin officially gave up his business and turned Huobi overseas. Ten million, giving each employee an extra month's salary.

Under such circumstances, trust is shaky and has become an empty term that is inconvenient to delve into. Some employees are worried, "If something happens to Huobi, Li Lin will take care of it. But when Huobi is in trouble, Justin Sun will only take out the bottom, so everyone just thinks about how to make a profit and runs away, betrayal in both directions."

Terminally ill: only a lonely planet left

In the end, lovers and blood relationships became the last layer of safety net, maintaining the weak relationship between this "patient" and free existence. They almost pulled him back to a normal world.

Sun Yuchen's father works at Huobi.com, specializing in catching corruption. Internally, his father is called "Master" and "Head of the Huobi Discipline Inspection Commission." A Huobi employee once said, "Justin Sun doesn't believe anyone. He always feels that someone is corrupt." For a period of time, all the money he made was managed by his father.

Ma Jiajia said that Sun's father was conservative and old-school, and had seriously considered "handing over" all the money "in exchange for his son's freedom to return to China. But everyone has seen the result.”

She and Justin Sun had a real relationship for a period of time. However, Justin Sun's extremely weak contractual spirit not only led to the breakdown of his relationships with his colleagues, but also led to the failure of intimate relationships. Ma Jiajia believes that "being with him is a stain on my life."

At this point, there is only a huge dissatisfaction between the former lovers. "He stands on top of the heads of people all over the world. I thought he would It took him a lifetime to get to the point of being anti-human and anti-society, but I didn’t expect him to get there in one step.”

It is rare for Justin Sun to have a real hostess in his mansion. Even his assistant who is close to him, a person who has followed him for many years, thinks that his inner sense of boundaries is extremely clear. "I sometimes ask him, Brother Sun, how many girlfriends do you have now and do you have any plans to get married? He will change the subject."

He may have thought about having a child, but he does not value the role of "mother". A former Huobi employee said that Justin Sun had seriously studied artificial insemination and surrogacy.

I don’t need a trusting relationship, and I’m not good at romantic relationships; I’m not obsessed with fame, and I still make enough money. When the big guys in the currency circle are generally enjoying the top wealth in the world, he seems like a person who is unable to struggle and no longer cares.

In Singapore, he rarely participates in the rich people's life and yacht parties. "Look at the occasionally circulated photos of him with others. They are all very business gatherings, with everyone wearing fake smiles and raising glasses to pose for photos," said a blockchain practitioner.

You can't see Justin Sun in the poker and egg-breaking games that are often held in the industry. Du Jun remembers that he and Justin Sun attended the after party after the Hong Kong web3 conference in April this year. At that time, many familiar people in the circle were playing cards in full swing and called them to come and play, but Sun Yuchen held the wine glass and only watched from a distance for a while.

Other than making money, he seems to have no special hobbies. According to his assistant, Sun Yuchen works from morning to night, at home and in the office. Moreover, he has no appetite and only eats food cooked by the family chef every day. The meals were put into lunch boxes and brought into his office. They looked just like the most ordinary lunch boxes outside. And in order to stay in shape, he often kills a meal with a little vegetable salad.

This is contrary to the imagination of many blockchain investors. In their view, Sun Yuchen should be extremely extravagant. "Even if Brother Sun uses pure I wouldn’t be surprised if a toilet was made of gold.”

The scenes and views described in the documentary "A Rich Life" are more in line with the public's perception of Sun Yuchen's "should have a life" - customized yachts, Luxury houses, top-notch luxury cars studded with diamonds, these "toys" that the super-rich can easily acquire with a snap of their fingers, Justin Sun seems to have none of them. In the existing culture, "people are more willing to talk about the new rich than old money, so the visible wealth (of the new rich) is very important."

Only when you go out on the street with him, you will have some understanding of the reasons for the above scene - the bodyguards are always there to support you. Some people even suspected that he had a body armor in his coat when he went to crowded places.

Although the rich spend huge sums of money on security every year, not everyone has the same fear as Sun Yuchen.

An entrepreneur who has close personal relationships with many big names in the cryptocurrency industry said that he heard in March this year that Sun Yuchen had a "reward order" in the Mainland. It has reached 50 million yuan.

"People around him come and go all the time, and everyone is thinking about how to make a fortune from him." Maybe the only ones who really care about him are those who The people he had "harvested" were eagerly waiting for him to return home.

"To be honest, I don't want a life like Sun Yuchen's," the above-mentioned entrepreneur said.

"A Rich Life" believes that people with extremely high net worth have serious trust problems, which makes their lives extremely complicated. And most wealthy people face a final fear: who will remember them and how they will be remembered. "When we look at them from afar, we wish we could have such a life ourselves, but the ultimate luxury, such as security and fearlessness, cannot be bought with more money."

We talked about a senior student of Justin Sun at Peking University, who also joined the Peking University Student Union. But when it comes to this junior student who he had crossed paths with before, he thinks this is a person not worth discussing. "At least we won't take the initiative to talk about him when we get together. A person who cannot bring value to the world does not rely on creativity for his success. If a person is the enemy of the world, he cannot be the boss."

We try to contact people who have helped and invested in Justin Sun. The reply I got was, “We can talk about the post-90s entrepreneurs, but we have no position (to talk about him) regarding Justin Sun.”

He seems to be alone on a lonely planet. No one is willing to spend energy to care about the secret of his heart - whether he will regret if he cannot return to mainland China in his life. And where will the planet he is on eventually wander to.

So, you can easily have a question, why is Justin Sun like this, and what else does he want?

Many media attribute his excessive pursuit of success to his parents' constant quarrels when he was young, his mother's overpowering mother, his tutor who competed for first place in everything, and his lack of security. family of origin. But it no longer matters whether this is the right answer. As an adult, he will only be drifting with the flow of fame and fortune.

As for the latter question, we asked him on the phone. Not surprisingly, he expressed his determination to contribute to the blockchain industry in a long speech. His public relations team also tried their best to persuade us that instead of writing about Sun Yuchen himself, it is better to write about Tron’s business and how Sun Yuchen uses technical means to “make the industry good.” “Brother Sun is an innocent person, why should we pay attention to him personally? What happened to him?"

In the end, the answers to all questions may only exist in his heart.

It's just a pity. When he returned to China after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013 and received financing from IDG Capital to join the blockchain industry, Justin Sun was once the most dazzling representative of post-90s entrepreneurs.

At that time, the tide of the PC era was fading from the beach of China's Internet. People still clearly remember that it was an era when Internet+, traditional local promotion, 2G network, Bitcoin, and mobile Internet trends went hand in hand.

The people born in the 1990s began to shoulder expectations. Some of them will become the light of this era ten years later. Justin Sun was supposed to be one of those bunches. But the turbulent opportunities have made it possible for many young people to bear the word "change", while in the hearts of others, the weight of "choice" has to be added.

Fame and fortune eventually erased the edge of this young man, and gave birth to all kinds of substances that are contrary to warmth, innovation, justice, and tolerance. It penetrates deeply into the skin, bloodstream, and may eventually spread throughout the body.