Sun Yuchen's 8 Years in the Crypto World: 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 world, weathering regulatory crackdowns, market collapses, and the downfall of industry giants with ease, firmly holding his ground at the industry's core. Recently, his name once again took the spotlight, and the saga continued to unfold dramatically.

First, he made headlines by spending a whopping $6.2 million on a banana, a surreal "extravagant purchase" that made it to the front pages of major mainstream media outlets. More recently, he enjoyed a stroke of good luck by getting involved with the Trump family. Then, yesterday, Justin Sun engaged in a virtual confrontation with Huobi's founder Li Lin, accusing him of concealing financial loopholes during a settlement process, leaving a $30 million "funding gap" that he had to personally cover. 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: wealth, power, and influence. This is also a microcosm of the most exciting moments in the crypto world over the past decade, with Justin Sun always standing at the center of this grand spectacle.

The editor-in-chief of the renowned US crypto media outlet CoinDesk was also fired just before Christmas.

What led to his dismissal was an article that his own parent company took down. In this article, the author heavily ridiculed Justin Sun, which, compared to CoinDesk's expertise in "exposing the truth," seemed more like a "personal attack." The article compiled negative aspects regarding TRON and Justin Sun over the past two years, and then used "I watched Justin Sun eat the most expensive banana in the world, I really don't get it" as the headline. After all, who doesn't enjoy seeing the media mock a billionaire? According to CoinDesk staff, Justin Sun reached out in the past, pressured them to retract the article, which directly led to the dismissal of three employees at the US's most prominent crypto media outlet CoinDesk, including editor-in-chief Kevin Reynolds.

From Justin's perspective, this is indeed infuriating. This is because TRON is one of the two top sponsors of the Consensus Hong Kong conference set to take place in March, and the Consensus conference is one of CoinDesk's primary sources of revenue. Anyone facing such a situation where they are being criticized while receiving money from the same party probably can't remain calm, especially since this article didn't have as solid evidence as CoinDesk's piece on FTX issues from years ago.

In 2022, CoinDesk "fired the first shot" towards FTX, which was at its peak at the time. After an article revealing Alameda, a crypto market maker's, balance sheet was published, the crypto world witnessed a roaring "butterfly effect." The crypto market plummeted, and numerous institutions collapsed. Unexpectedly, among the dominoes that fell, including CoinDesk itself, DCG (CoinDesk's former parent company) had a significant part of its revenue source, Genesis, bankrupted in the aftermath of FTX's collapse. This ultimately led DCG to sell off its media outlet, CoinDesk, to the trading platform Bullish. It was this Bullish entity that took down the controversial article and fired CoinDesk's editor-in-chief.

Compared to Justin Sun's acquisition of Huobi two years ago, the Bullish trading platform doesn't seem to be a well-known name. Most people who know about 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. Several years later, Block.one "split" from EOS, taking the $4.2 billion with it, and created a compliance-oriented trading platform, which is Bullish.

During the era of the public chain race and ICOs, Tron (TRON) and EOS, which initiated their ICOs at the same time, were entangled yet admired each other. Back then, the combined market capitalization of Tron (TRON) and EOS was less than 10% of Ethereum's, the second-largest public chain and cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. The best way to overthrow the mountain that is Ethereum was to temporarily "ally." Back then, Justin Sun even said in an interview: "Tron (TRON) is Liu Bang, EOS is Xiang Yu, Ethereum is the Qin Dynasty. He has to first defeat Ethereum, and then divide the empire with EOS."

Fast forward 7 years today, no one expected that the current landscape of the crypto world has overturned many people's perceptions.

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

However, the parent company behind EOS cannot be considered a failure. Many people do not know that EOS's parent company, Block.one, is currently the second-largest holder of Bitcoin after MicroStrategy, a publicly-traded company that holds the most BTC. Block.one owns a total of 160,000 BTC. Moreover, Block.one also holds nearly $2.2 billion in US Treasury bonds. It is worth noting that most of MSTR's BTC was purchased through stock issuance. As a publicly-traded company, MSTR's BTC belongs to all public market investors. In contrast, Block.one, as a private company, owns all its assets outright. So, where did the initial money to purchase these assets come from? Let's go back to 2017 when EOS conducted its ICO and raised $4.2 billion. This was Block.one's seed capital. In the following years, Block.one did not invest all the money in development but instead accumulated a large amount of assets. The largest expenditure in these years was a $24 million fine imposed by the SEC, which was definitely money well spent. It immediately resolved the issue of EOS raising funds from the public without registering with regulatory agencies. In today's popular terms, it helped Block.one land completely. Up to today, this company has become a compliant crypto tycoon with no 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 has been quiet since 2019, Block.one's $16 billion Bitcoin treasury can still thrive today, and they have launched their own trading platform, Bullish, seeking listing and licensing 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-year free ride." This is another decision made coincidentally by EOS and TRON.

In 2019, Justin Sun acquired the famous 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 trading platform Bullish, 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 has over $10 billion in cash and digital asset capital. Notable 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 beginning—scale doesn't matter, but compliance does—because Bullish's ultimate goal is not to earn how much profit in the crypto world but to list on the US stock market.

Prior to official operation, Bullish reached agreements with listed companies like Far Peak to invest $840 million to acquire 9% of the company's shares and merge for $25 billion to achieve a SPAC listing, lowering the traditional IPO threshold.

Bullish's CEO is a professional manager named Farley, who has a strong compliance background: he was appointed COO and President of the New York Stock Exchange, where he had 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 has proven to be much more challenging than they imagined. After receiving a regulatory crackdown signal in the United States, Bullish's original SPAC merger agreement was terminated in 2022, pausing the 18-month "public listing" plan. Bullish has also started considering other compliance avenues, such as acquiring FTX, and is currently focusing more resources in 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 spread across the United States, Singapore, Gibraltar, and other locations.

This ground-up approach to compliance from the start does ensure regulatory adherence but comes with significant drawbacks. It is inefficient, and while 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 feature in The Wall Street Journal, Bullish claimed that "since commencing operations in November 2021, it has traded over $300 billion and consistently ranks among the top three globally in Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading volume."

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

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

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

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

Nevertheless, USDT remains the reigning king in the crypto world. As of the time of writing, the total supply of USDC is 460 billion, while USDT's total supply stands at 1400 billion.

When USDT was first established, Tether Company chose to initially issue USDT on Bitcoin's Layer 2 protocol, Omni Layer. However, the issues became apparent to users soon after. Omni's speed was too slow, and the minimum transfer amount in OMNI version required 4 USDT, sometimes even up to 10, making it very uneconomical for small transactions.

Therefore, Tether shifted its focus to Ethereum, the second-largest public blockchain after Bitcoin, during its heyday. Ethereum partly solved this issue, but the pursuit of faster speeds and lower fees continued. Subsequently, Tether began to explore issuing USDT on more public blockchains. Eventually, in the crypto industry, the initiation of asset issuance by USDT on a particular public blockchain became a sign of mainstream industry recognition for that blockchain. After all, USDT is as good as gold, and having so many assets issued on a particular blockchain proves that Tether, as an industry giant, acknowledges the security and usability of that blockchain. Moreover, the genuine on-chain users and fee income brought by USDT are highly sought after by various public blockchains. Even platforms like Tron and EOS saw this as an opportunity.

In April 2019, Tether issued the TRC-20 version of USDT on the Tron network. No one knows how Justin Sun managed to secure Tether for Tron.

Six months later, on the belated EOS mainnet, 5 million USDT were also issued. Optimistically speaking, the EOS version of USDT further advances trading, with faster speeds and much quicker transaction times compared to Tron. However, the speed of the crypto industry is much faster than traditional industries, and at the crossroads of forks, 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, successively launching promotional activities such as "Hundreds of Millions in Interest Subsidies."

At that time, during the mutual achievement period between Justin Sun and CZ, with great cooperation, the big brother Binance stepped in to support TRON, launching an activity — deposit TRC20-USDT to earn 16% annualized interest. In addition to Binance, several other exchanges including OKEx and Huobi announced their support for TRC20-USDT.

Justin Sun himself was actively speaking out on Weibo, almost posting TRC20-USDT-related Weibo posts 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," Justin Sun expressed full confidence in this matter.

On the other hand, EOS was proceeding at a leisurely pace, seemingly squandering the unique advantages it possessed. One of the co-founders of Block.one, Brock Pierce, was also a co-founder of Tether. EOS clearly had the opportunity to take the lead.

To the point that early EOS community KOLs lamented, "I have always attached great importance to USDT and its development. Initially, what I looked forward to most in the EOS ecosystem was the EOS version of USDT. Unfortunately, Block.one did not push forward, and major exchanges did not push forward. It wasn't until the launch of Bitfinex's eosfinex that it was finally released, but it was already too late."

Moreover, when transferring on EOS, various resources need to be leased, and a memo must be filled out, leaving some new users at a loss, as the operational experience is not as convenient as Ethereum and Bitcoin, which also impacts the adoption of EOS.

"With the growth of demand, more EOS-USDT may also be issued in the future. However, it will definitely not be issued in the billions or tens of billions of dollars because the entire value of the EOS network or the value transacted is limited." This is what an analyst said 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, there are 85.25 million USDT issued on the EOS chain, while this number is 59.7 billion on the TRON chain.

Data Source: USDT Official Website

On October 22, 2020, an internal member of a certain EOS wallet penned a poignant "An Indictment Letter to Block.one" highlighting the issues within the EOS ecosystem. This letter instantly spread across the internet. Amidst the lengthy tirade against Block.one and BM, TRON's founder Justin Sun was unexpectedly "praised": "At this point as a foundation, I highly appreciate Justin Sun, regardless of whether he is seen as copying in the eyes of technical stream like BM. At least, he is responsible for TRX holders, contributing to the Tron public chain with real actions, especially in operation promotion and support for Tron project parties."

Today, USDT has already become a legitimate "peer-to-peer digital cash," achieving Satoshi Nakamoto's vision before BTC. Russia's top officials have used USDT to bypass trade restrictions and purchase goods. Since the comprehensive sanctions began in 2022, Russian companies engaged in nickel, steel, and other metals, as well as bulk trades such as timber, face various challenges: receiving commodity payments, purchasing equipment and raw materials, among other aspects. However, USDT pegged 1:1 to the US dollar has been less affected by sanctions, providing support for Russia's international position.

In Argentina, the country with the highest cryptocurrency adoption rate in the Western Hemisphere, people are not playing a cryptocurrency lottery game or trying to get rich quick through the next hot token. They usually buy and hold USDT, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar with a market value of $138 billion. Most citizens consider it a safe wealth storage tool, helping to withstand Argentina's staggering 276% inflation rate.

Cryptocurrency exchange points prevalent throughout 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 significant amount of cryptocurrency to hedge against the sharp depreciation of the Turkish Lira, with USDT being a preferred choice.

Crypto exchange in Istanbul, Image Source: Reddit

Moreover, some Chinese traders in Yiwu, who have earned 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 using cryptocurrency as a payment method. Compared to more volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Tether's USDT stablecoin, pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio, is more convenient for import and export calculations and settlements.

In addition, USDT is widely used in these markets, such as for purchasing channels to circumvent internet restrictions and payment channels for buying Twitter followers.

For example, the favorite pirated video platform among international students, Aiyifan, includes USDT as a payment option for member recharge, and the only supported network option is TRC-20, which is the token format of USDT on the TRON network. Apart from TRON, USDT currently operates on multiple other mainstream blockchain networks. However, Aiyifan only supports the TRON network and even offers an 80% discount when paying through this method.

"Aiyifan is widely used among overseas Chinese communities, possibly being the largest pirated video site in terms of global user base. In 2020, it had over 6 million unique users, and after the pandemic, it has seen a significant surge, with the current user base being at least 10 million," introduced a heavy user of Aiyifan to us.

Today, many USDT transfers are facilitated through the TRON network. Until November last year, the amount of USDT issued on the TRON network was the highest among all chains, with Ethereum being the other main chain with the highest USDT circulation. Although recently, the USDT circulation on Ethereum has surpassed TRON for the first time, the difference in data is still small, only differing by $600 million.

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

Data Source: Dune

While Bitcoin is still striving to become a financial trading asset via ETF, USDT has already achieved Mass Adoption, a goal often pursued in the Web3 community. TRON has emerged as the biggest beneficiary after Tether. Related reads: "Redefining Tron: A USDT-Dedicated Chain" and "Why is TRX's Market Cap Surging? TRON's Stablecoin Dominance".

In the stablecoin market, TRON is undoubtedly the "King in the Middle". Looking back five years later, this decision laid the foundation for TRON to hold 99% of its market value.

With high transaction volumes, naturally comes higher revenue. In terms of revenue, TRON's total revenue in 2024 was $2.12 billion, with a daily total revenue record 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

In the midst of TRON's current glory, Tether has added a touch of sadness to EOS's downfall. In June of last year, Tether decided to stop issuing USDT on EOS, stating that they would prioritize supporting a community-driven blockchain, implying that EOS lacked community support.

"This is the brilliance of one city and the downfall of another."

After the launch of the EOS mainnet, it did not flourish as expected. Instead, vulnerabilities emerged frequently, leading to the birth of a specialized code audit security industry due to code vulnerabilities. BM arbitrarily changed the EOS "constitution," triggering a severe community credit crisis. EOS's development took a nosedive, the user base shrank, key developers left one after another, and the price of EOS tokens plummeted from $23 in May 2018 to the current $0.6. Although midway, "gambling and high-risk" applications attracted a large number of users, their value creation was far below that of TRON, and "game" applications did not become as popular as those on Ethereum.

"EOS had already killed itself in 2019," a sentiment now shared by many OGs in the crypto circle. Management missteps were also a significant issue for Block.one. Looking at it from the perspective of EOS's founder BM at the time, he saw himself as the last emperor of Wei, Cao Mao, while Block.one's founder BB was Sima Zhao. High-level appointments at Block.one were entirely based on personal relationships, with key positions such as Chief Strategy Officer and Communications Head held by BB's childhood friends or family members, lacking external challenges and a professional perspective.

The inevitable outcome was BM's departure, leading to a continuous decline in technical development and code quality, and a steep decline in EOS's market performance. Even Block.one was preparing to sell a large amount of EOS. This caused unrest throughout the entire EOS ecosystem, from investors to developers to nodes, as everyone was deeply dissatisfied with Block.one.

As a community representative, the EOS Foundation stepped forward and began negotiations with Block.one. However, over the course of a month, various solutions were discussed but no agreement was reached. Eventually, the EOS Foundation, together with 17 nodes, revoked Block.one's power position and removed them from the EOS management. Without its parent company, EOS began to resemble more and more like 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 initially raised. However, up to now, Block.one still retains ownership and user rights to the funds.

How Block.one used the $4.2 billion raised during the EOS ICO in that year is undoubtedly the most burning question on everyone's mind.

Part of the answer was revealed in a March 19, 2019 email from BM to Block.one shareholders: as of February 2019, Block.one's total assets (including cash and invested funds) amounted to $3 billion.

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

Some information about the invested funds can be found publicly: gaming company Forte, NFT platform Immutable, and a resort hotel in Puerto Rico, among others. In general, the companies invested in share a common trait: they have little to no relation to EOS.

Before Bullish became a core business, Block.one had an ace up its sleeve: the social product Voice, deployed based on EOSIO smart contracts, which is the only product with a business relationship to EOS. To build Voice, Block.one invested $150 million, with the largest expense being a $30 million purchase of a domain name from MicroStrategy, the publicly traded company known for holding the most Bitcoin.

However, it seems like fate's curse that Voice's initial launch event lasted only half an hour, fell short of expectations, received much disappointment, and led to a price drop in EOS. Half a year later, when the Voice iOS version was launched on the Apple store, various malfunctions and Bdangsug occurred on the same day, and the Voice website displayed "Error 1020," stating that the site was "using a security service to protect itself from online attacks." EOS holders were completely disappointed, and Voice finally announced its gradual closure in September 2023.

Projects Launched by Block.one

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

On one side we have Block.one accumulating Bitcoin, while on the other side we have Justin Sun, jokingly referred to as the "E Guard" trading master. In 2020, Justin Sun's on-chain assets remained around $300 million, but in just one year, this number multiplied 23 times, reaching $7 billion.

Data Source: Arkm

"If Justin Sun didn't have a professional research team, then he is a very successful trader." Someone in the community evaluated him like this: "Both topping and bottoming out are Justin Sun's strengths."

In addition to selling over 100,000 Ethereum at a price of $3,674 in the past few months, from June to July last year, when the ETH price was hovering around $1,870, he quickly sold nearly 39,000 ETH, after 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 like traditional finance's "High-Yield Savings Account"; users deposit their cryptocurrency into a decentralized exchange's liquidity pool to earn returns.

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

Justin's previous position in Pendle, Sourced from Ai

For example, in the traditional financial market, the yield rate of US Treasury Bonds usually ranges from 3-5%, while bank deposit interest rates are even lower, perhaps less than 1%. In comparison, the yield rates of several DeFi mining projects Justin participated in might seem somewhat aggressive to traditional finance professionals: Ether.fi: By holding until maturity, Justin Sun can earn a 1% return within 22 days, equivalent to an annualized rate of 17.33%; Puffer: This investment has an even higher annualized yield rate of 18.93%; Kelp: Slightly lower, but still offers a 14.33% annualized yield rate.

Similar to Justin Sun's investment style, the development of TRON has been more ambitious compared to Block.one's relatively passive approach. From the progress of the TRON project, it is evident that Justin Sun has invested significant funds and resources over the past few years, ultimately leading TRX to join the "billion-dollar market cap club."

TRON's daily income has grown from $1,000 in 2020 to $2 million in 2024, a 2000x increase. In this bull market cycle, there are not many "old-school altcoins" that have reached new all-time highs in price, with only a few recognizable names like SOL, BNB, TON, and OKB. TRX is also among them, even achieving a new all-time high earlier than Ethereum.

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

Furthermore, TRON's initial fundraising was only one-tenth of EOS's.

Let's go back to 2017 when both chains started their journey.

At that time, the crypto space had experienced the ICO boom and the 94% crash, entering a year of "regulatory reckoning" for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin's price dropped from a high of $19,870 to around $3,000, Ethereum started preparing for its 2.0 upgrade two to three years after its launch, Binance emerged as the world's largest exchange, and Solana was still two years away from its debut.

It was 2017 when Ethereum's two main competitors almost simultaneously entered the historical stage. Justin Sun, just past his 27th birthday, set aside his original social app, found some classmates from Peking University, rode on the coattails of the big players, and enthusiastically returned to the crypto space to create the TRON chain. On the other hand, BM, whom even Satoshi Nakamoto had criticized in the past, parted ways with his previous two projects, teamed up with the marketing ace BB, and planned to build the first-generation Ethereum killer and blockchain 3.0.

In August 2017, TRON started its ICO two months after EOS but ended its fundraising nine months before EOS because "9.4" arrived. Chinese projects and exchanges fell silent and quickly fled, swearing never to do blockchain again, from ancestors to future generations.

In subsequent recollections, Justin Sun described the scene at that time: "Those asking for refunds outside were like scenes from 'The Walking Dead' or 'Train to Busan.' As soon as the glass door opened, you would be trampled to death. People demanding refunds held knives to their necks, saying, 'Either return our Ethereum immediately, or there will be bloodshed on either side.'"

That was TRON's most troubled time. Most of the early team members had left, and the partners had all resigned due to concerns about personal safety.

"In my 6 years of entrepreneurial journey, the first three years were basically wasted," said Justin Sun. By the end of the ICO, TRON had raised a total of 4 billion U.S. dollars, but there wasn't much left after refunds.

Some are jubilant, while others are worried.

On the other hand, EOS, which had both outstanding technology and idealism, raised 4.2 billion U.S. dollars during its year-long ICO. Not only that, they were well prepared on the regulatory front, with a solid legal team guiding them. The ICO audience was mostly Chinese and Korean, with less funding from the U.S. In the end, when pursued by the SEC, Block.one only paid a fine of 24 million U.S. dollars. They were very lucky because at the same time, projects like Telegram and TON, which were targeted by the SEC, had their $1.7 billion token issuance plans directly halted. Since the team members were U.S. citizens, the Chinese 94 regulatory incident had almost no impact on EOS.

The starkly contrasting treatment led to Sun describing his situation as, "I just stole a corn cob, but they used a cannon to attack me."

EOS had a smooth first year. However, starting in the second half of 2018, the price of EOS kept falling to new lows. There were repeated rumors within the community about BM (Block.one's CTO Brendan Blumer) planning to leave EOS, until BM actually left in 2019.

It is said that at that time, some large EOS holders were extremely angry, especially those who had followed BM since 2013. Feeling abandoned by BM, they harbored resentment, created a Telegram group, discussed how to deal with BM, and even someone offered a bounty of 100 bitcoins for BM's assassination through the dark web. This prompted BM to quickly rejoin the EOS community Telegram group, providing frequent advice to the community and refraining from appearing in real life for a long time.

Combined with robust SEC oversight, EOS and Block.one were constrained and unable to take significant actions in recent years.

Speaking of regulation, this is something Sun is somewhat proud of: "I am very good at dealing with regulators." After all, apart from Sun, perhaps no one knows the truth and details of that year. How did he handle the Chinese 94 regulation incident? Was he actually detained at the border at that time? Did he go to Korea only after hearing the wind? How did he ultimately bypass the border control?

However, in all versions of the story, there is a common point, that is, Sun understands regulation well. On July 25, 2019, Sun sent an apology letter, expressing gratitude and apologies, emphasizing "concern for and love from my leaders and regulatory agencies." In addition, Sun began seeking refuge in various "micro countries" around the world: in 2021, he served as Grenada's Permanent WTO Representative and Extraordinary Ambassador, and was elected as the Prime Minister of Liberland (an unrecognized microstate).

Recently, Justin Sun has been riding high.

Unlike his previous interactions with small countries, he has recently connected with the world's largest country, the family of U.S. President Trump. In November last year, Justin Sun announced that he would purchase $30 million worth of World Liberty tokens, and this World Liberty project has a significant background—it is a Defi project launched by the Trump family.

For ordinary investors, the appeal of holding World Liberty tokens is not significant. They cannot share in company profits nor resell the tokens. It is said that of the initial $30 million raised, 75% went directly into Trump's company account. Instead of an investment, this seems more like a donation, making it an opportune time to make a political contribution.

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

The eldest brother on the TRON blockchain, Justin Sun, successfully became an advisor to the project, and World Liberty also gradually acquired TRON (TRX) tokens to enrich its treasury. There are rumors that Trump's pre-presidential virtual currency $TRUMP also has Justin Sun's shadow, and Justin Sun's attitude on his personal social media is neither affirmative nor negative.

From the current results, compared to other cryptocurrency bigwigs, Justin Sun has shown remarkable flexibility under regulatory pressure. FTX founder SBF's fate is destined to spend time in prison, and CZ has temporarily "settled" the issue of future freedom with $4.3 billion and a few months of prison life. TRON users are all on-chain, with no KYC form on the trading platform. The only issue regulators can find is related to sanction funds and money laundering in USDT transactions. But because the issuer of USDT is Tether, and TRON only provides the infrastructure, service providers will not face issues ahead of Tether when it comes to regulation.

Eight years ago, Justin Sun returned to China to start a business, declaring in a speech, "I measure a person's standard by how much money they make." What he said is indeed what he does. Setting aside the idealism of a literary youth, Justin Sun has embarked on a pragmatic, almost ruthless "money-making" path.

Today, eight years later, 35-year-old Justin Sun has assets worth $2 billion in his on-chain wallet, with rumors of his net worth being $100 billion. He can wave his hand and spend $6.2 million on a banana artwork. He has maximized the use of rules, leveraged resources, and won this game of "crypto gold rush" on his terms.

What's even more intriguing is that, at every crossroad where paths diverge, EOS and Block.one, who have always been at odds with TRON, today hold 16.4 thousand Bitcoins worth 16 billion dollars in their treasury.

And so, fate has brought about a somewhat absurd "convergence in divergence." TRON and EOS have also inscribed a Tale of Two Cities in the crypto era.

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