Justin Sun: Workaholics are the only thing that supports the Chinese crypto community. In fact, no one really pays attention to me personally.

After Binance and Changpeng Zhao reached a settlement with US regulators over a sky-high fine of $7.1 billion, people generally speculated that the US regulatory storm would not stop.

While the Americans have not made any statement, a technology media company listed in the United States has published a personal report on Justin Sun, the founder of TRON. Without interviewing Justin Sun himself, the company made a lot of one-sided and unconfirmed speculations about his work and life through a large amount of public materials and interviews with many anonymous people claiming to be industry insiders.

In response to the renewed attention and interpretation from the Chinese media, Sun Yuchen, who is now over 30 years old, responded on the X platform that compared with when he first started his business ten years ago, he is now "calm" about negative media articles and no longer feels "unfair and unfair."

However, he also revealed one thing: he has no time to care about anything else, which confirms the fact that he is a "workaholic" as reported by the media.

Since 2008, the blockchain and encryption industry has gone through a whole generation. Among the "old players" active in the industry today, Justin Sun is the undisputed number one. This also explains from the side why at the 2023 Web3.0 Carnival in Hong Kong, although some people launched pranks against Justin Sun on social platforms, they shouted "Senior Brother Sun" offline and asked for a photo.

Justin Sun is indeed controversial, but it is undeniable that after Zhao Changpeng retired, Justin Sun has become the most influential Chinese practitioner in the crypto circle.

Justin Sun: Seeking a decentralized self

After being reminded that someone had written a negative article about him, Justin Sun said that he no longer had time to care about anything else.

Justin Sun believes that he has a great responsibility for the blockchain and crypto industry. This responsibility actually comes from both internal and external factors. The internal factor is how to guide Huobi HTX to return to the top cryptocurrency exchange and how to allow TRON, which has just gained 200 million users, to continue to receive smooth blockchain services. The external factor is that the industry's grassroots era has passed. In 2023, the industry has reached the edge of a cliff and has no choice but to jump over it. With the multi-pronged attack of US regulators, compliance has become the first thing that crypto companies and projects need to consider.

Being at a critical moment for the industry, Huobi HTX and TRON, it is not difficult to understand why he remains calm about the media's speculations and reports about him personally.

In response to this, Justin Sun joked, "I don't want my role to be too big," and it would be best if it were decentralized "to reassure everyone."

The Sun Yuchen of 2023 is different from the past. He no longer shows his jumping image in the past, and has a clearer understanding of his own positioning and goals. He is still serious, but in the first half of the year he put forward his personal positioning: believer, evangelist and practitioner, who wants to participate in creating an emerging financial order brought by blockchain technology.

He believes that a lot of criticism against him comes from money. It is not only that money has become a common source of anxiety for people in modern society, but also the so-called "disorder" he perceives. Sun Yuchen wrote in his tweet that "money may be a possibility of freedom" and "like a part of order", and in the financial field, disorder can have serious consequences.

Blockchain is a better financial order for human beings. Sun Yuchen interprets it as a financial system that is accessible to everyone, has a low threshold, and has a truly inclusive meaning.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to reassure regulators, satisfy users, and ensure social acceptance. Justin Sun admitted that although TRON and Huobi HTX have realized many functions and launched many products and services, there is still a lot of work to be done before a completely decentralized and compliant future.

The encryption industry from the perspective of information cocoon

On the other hand, due to special domestic reasons, blockchain and cryptocurrency are severely stigmatized on popular platforms, which further deepens the public's prejudice against the industry and Justin Sun. In fact, the value of blockchain and cryptocurrency is not only widely recognized in developed countries such as Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, but has also become an important part of inclusive finance in some developing countries.

Initially, the crypto industry was a gathering place for some crypto geeks and a niche industry that was not accepted by the mainstream. However, with the continuous development of encryption technology, the crypto industry has been regarded by many countries and some commercial institutions as a cutting-edge technology strategy and an integral part of modern financial services.

Currently, a number of Web2 business giants, including Visa, Tesla, BNY Mellon, and BlackRock, are embracing cryptocurrencies by supporting payments and purchasing and holding. At the national level, El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as its legal tender, and Colorado, USA, has accepted cryptocurrencies as a tax payment method. This year, Japan's Kishida government also formulated a Web3 national revitalization strategy, hoping to revitalize the Japanese economy through emerging industries. Many countries and regions, including Asia, Europe and the United States, are also exploring emerging policies that are friendly to the development of the crypto industry.

In addition, the crypto asset sector is having a positive impact on traditional finance. A number of financial institutions, represented by Grayscale, Ryder, Invesco and WisdomTree, are actively applying to securities regulators for ETFs of mainstream crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Cryptocurrency ETF products are highly recognized in many developed financial regions such as Hong Kong, the United States, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. Established financial institutions are focusing on mainstream cryptocurrency financial products, presumably because they have seen the huge potential of such products.

Even though the crypto industry is booming, many people still have great deviations and even prejudices in their understanding of the crypto industry. The root cause of this phenomenon is that the crypto industry is in an information cocoon in self-media and selective media reports. This kind of partial information disclosure can easily mislead the public. China is the hardest hit area of ​​this situation. Some mainstream media reporters even bluntly stated that they would not report that the rise in cryptocurrency prices benefited investors, but only reported that the price of the currency plummeted and the liquidation of the account.

Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that as a representative figure in the crypto industry, Justin Sun has a deep connection with the crypto industry itself. This has further caused some "ignorant" members of the public to develop prejudices against the crypto industry and follow suit to smear it. They will also indirectly direct their spearheads at industry figures such as Justin Sun and produce a series of negative comments.

However, the good news is that with Grayscale's victory in the lawsuit against the SEC and a series of favorable policies released in many regions, while driving the market industry to recover, it is also injecting confidence into the development of the industry and pushing the industry towards a more mature direction, which will help the public to have a new understanding of the crypto industry.

Recently, when a self-media account with many fans was promoting the liquidation caused by the price fluctuation of cryptocurrency, an interesting scene appeared in the comment area. Many readers accused the author of being blinded by one thing and completely ignoring the fact that the performance of mainstream cryptocurrencies has greatly outperformed China's A-shares and domestic real estate market during the same period. This shows that in China, more and more people are thinking independently about blockchain and cryptocurrency and are breaking through the information cocoon.

In fact, Justin Sun himself has always maintained a relatively optimistic attitude, and has repeatedly expressed his positive attitude towards the general trend of the industry in his speeches at industry summits. His prediction of industry recovery has also been confirmed once again.

Perseverance and hard work

Sun Yuchen’s own views and the external environment may be subjective factors, but one unavoidable fact is that TRON, founded by Sun Yuchen, has survived five years in the blockchain industry, where iterations and eliminations are extremely rapid and brutal, and is still growing, with users all over the world.

Since 2017, the crypto industry has seen several waves of public chain booms, from the initial rush of major public chains to Ethereum in an attempt to become the leader of the public chain 2.0 era, to the past two years when a number of innovators including PolkaDot, Cosmos, Avalanche, etc. have attempted to redefine the public chain. However, with the alternation of several rounds of bull and bear markets, it seems that only TRON remains strong and continues to be active in the industry.

According to data from the DeFiLlama website, TRON currently ranks second among public chains in terms of asset pledge, second only to Ethereum. At the end of 2020, Ethereum accounted for 96% of the market share in this field. So far, it has dropped to 53.97%, of which TRON's share has risen from 0.68% to 18.93%.

Image source: https://defillama.com/chains

Although TRON's total funds are not as good as Ethereum's, the transaction activity on TRON's chain is much better than Ethereum's. Nansen, a well-known blockchain data and research service provider, released a report showing that on October 22, TRON's total transaction volume was 4.39 million, while Ethereum's transaction volume was 980,000. In addition, according to TRONscan data, as of December 22, TRON's total on-chain transactions exceeded 6.8 billion, the total number of independent addresses exceeded 200 million, and TVL exceeded 20 billion US dollars, which is also far higher than most on-chain ecosystems.

One of the important factors that has enabled TRON to achieve such success is that in the early days of TRON, Justin Sun was firmly optimistic about the development of the blockchain industry and was able to clearly judge industry trends and make forward-looking decisions. In the early days of the crypto industry, he believed that crypto innovation could bring new value to the Internet and financial industries, and the continuous progress of governments and Web2 business giants embracing cryptocurrencies, crypto ETFs, and crypto payments, etc., all confirmed his early judgment on the general trend.

In the industry, Justin Sun is always able to seize early opportunities in potential tracks and cutting-edge fields. Through layout, he has built the TRON ecosystem into a complete ecosystem including public chains, stablecoins, wallets, exchanges, DeFi, etc., and continues to explore areas such as the metaverse and AI to consolidate his position in the industry in the long term.

Justin Sun also stated at the Milken Institute Asia Summit: "If a comprehensive regulatory framework can be established, the crypto industry still has a lot of room for growth. Currently, there may be only about 100 million crypto users, but if the supervision is clear, we can get 2-3 billion users within 3 to 5 years."

In this direction, Justin Sun is also actively trying, such as promoting TRON to become the national blockchain infrastructure designated by Dominica, a country in the Caribbean region, and deeply deploying in the fields of stablecoins and RWA to establish connections with the traditional world in a new way. He also maintains close cooperation with governments and regulators of various countries, and is expected to take the lead in realizing deployment in policy-friendly regions, etc.

Not long ago, international authoritative media such as Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Associated Press and Le Figaro, a well-known French media, reported that Justin Sun won the title of "Crypto Entrepreneur of the Year" at the Blockchain Life 2023 Industry Summit in Dubai, and TRON won the "Best Layer 1 of the Year" award. Justin Sun and his TRON are gaining more and more mainstream recognition.

The crypto industry is a field with extremely fast iterations in technology and narrative. In the short ten years of the crypto industry, there are only a few survivors among the first batch of entrepreneurs who can continue to dig deep and remain active in the industry for a long time. Such Justin Sun and TRON cannot be simply summarized and described as "swindlers" or "crazy". Swindlers can only cheat for a while, and they cannot succeed for so long. Crazy people may be lucky for a while, but they cannot survive for a long time.

Sun Yuchen has been in the spotlight for a long time, which is more likely the result of his undisguised nature. He rarely hides his extreme pursuit, ambition and willingness to achieve his goals. These traits are often the real but dark path to success, and these traits are often what people like him who have achieved extraordinary success in career and money try hard to hide. Perhaps for Sun Yuchen, the dividends and opportunities of the times are so huge, and success comes so quickly, he does not need to cover up and hide his ambitions and path.