Who is Justin Sun, the Chinese billionaire at Trump’s crypto dinner?
Sun, known for his showy publicity stunts, has spent more than $20 million on the $TRUMP meme coin, making him one of the largest holders of the coin.
Justin Sun — a Chinese crypto billionaire known for showy publicity stunts, including spending $6.24 million on a banana duct taped to a wall — made perhaps his biggest splash yet on Thursday, when he reveled in his status as one of the biggest holders of President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency project.
He whooped enthusiastically when Trump arrived at the black-tie gala at a Trump golf club in Virginia. “Yeah, super cool!” he shouted when the president asked the participants if they had seen Marine One outside.
He posed in front of the Stars and Stripes with his fist raised, captioning the photo on X: “Fight! Fight! Fight!,” echoing a Trump catch-cry.
He claimed to have been “awarded” a Trump Golden Tourbillon watch, retail price $100,000, by the president. And he breathlessly documented he whole thing on X. (Trump was not in Sun’s footage of the watch presentation.)
“It’s really nice to be here today … to witness this great moment of crypto,” he said in one of the videos.
It was clearly a big night for Sun, who holds more than $20 million in the $TRUMP meme coin, which he says makes him the top holder of the coin. He also invested $75 million in another Trump family crypto project, World Liberty Financial, after his election victory.
Follow Trump’s second term
Sun, who founded the cryptocurrency Tron, has good reason to present himself as Trump’s biggest fan.
The Biden-era Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Sun with fraud and market manipulation in 2023. But in February, after Sun announced his investment in World Liberty, the SEC asked a court to pause the lawsuit.
Critics say Trump’s foray into crypto oversteps ethical boundaries by allowing the president to profit off his office and allowing crypto enthusiasts, like Sun, to buy access to Trump.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that it was “absurd for anyone to insinuate” such a thing. A Tron spokesperson declined a request for an interview with Sun. Representatives for the SEC, World Liberty Financial and the Trump coin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While Sun’s emergence at the center of Trump’s crypto project may be surprising to some, Zennon Kapron, director of GL Insight, a Singapore-based fintech consultancy, said the two men have uncanny similarities.
“In some ways, Justin and Trump could be considered kindred spirits: they both like telling stories, making big splashes, drawing attention to themselves,” Kapron said. “The fact that we’re starting to see overlap between their orbits is not surprising.”
Here’s what you need to know about Sun, his orbit and how it overlaps with Trump.
Who is Justin Sun and where did he come from?
Sun, 34, was born in Qinghai province, a remote region in China’s northwest. He studied history at the selective Peking University in Beijing and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Returning to China after he graduated from U-Penn. in 2013, he jumped headfirst into the business world, founding Peiwo, an audio live-streaming app that matched users based on interests and voice samples. Peiwo helped Sun land on a Forbes “30 under 30” list for tech entrepreneurs in Asia.
Sun then set his sights on a new industry: cryptocurrency. At Hupan University, a business school founded by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Sun wrote a thesis called “The Birth of the Decentralized internet,” which chronicled the history of the blockchain industry.
In 2017, Sun founded his own cryptocurrency, Tron, which now has a market capitalization of $26 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, a crypto data platform. Tron has helped Sun mint a personal fortune of $8.5 billion, according to Forbes. But the cryptocurrency has also been criticized for its involvement in illicit activities, including by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which reported its frequent use by crime syndicates and money laundering operations last year.
What makes Sun stand out from the crypto crowd?
Sun is famous for theatrical — and expensive — promotional gimmicks.
In 2019, he paid $4.6 million for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett, the renowned American investor, but canceled at the last minute.
Two years later, he shelled out $28 million for a seat on the first crewed spaceflight operated by Blue Origin, the space firm founded by Jeff Bezos, — but he canceled that too, reportedly concerned about setting foot on U.S. soil while coming under financial regulators’ scrutiny.
Meantime, he became the ambassador to the World Trade Organization for Grenada, a small Caribbean island, and uses “H.E.” — short for “His Excellency” — in his social media bios.
In perhaps the strangest stunt yet, Sun paid over $6 million in November for a modern art piece consisting of a banana duct taped to the wall. Just a few days later in a news conference in Hong Kong, he ate the fruit.
“It’s much tastier than other bananas,” he said, after taking a few bites.
To this day, he’s still posting about bananas.
Cheney Tsoi, the president of the Hong Kong-based Asia Blockchain Society, who has known Sun for several years, says that Sun “understands exactly how to grab attention in the crypto circle.”
“He’s a master at this game and has managed to draw the entire crypto community’s spotlight toward himself,” he added. “It’s hard to think of anyone more talked about than him in the entire crypto world right now.”
What is Sun’s relationship with Trump?
Sun’s attempt to court Trump dates back to the president’s first term.
When he won the lunch with Buffett in 2019, Sun went on Twitter to invite Trump — who was then a crypto skeptic — to join. “Mr. President, you are misled by fake news. #Bitcoin & #Blockchain happens to be the best chance for US!” he wrote. “I guarantee you after this lunch, nobody will know crypto more than you!” Trump did not accept the invitation.
A streaming site Sun owns, called DLive, even played a part on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. DLive, which had become popular among far-right personalities, provided a platform for some rioters to broadcast their experience and earn money in the process from viewers’ tips.
But Sun’s recent attempts to get into Trump’s orbit have been far more successful, helped by Trump’s second-term embrace of the crypto industry, to the extent he has even called himself the “crypto president.”
In November, Sun announced a $30 million investment in World Liberty Financial, a separate crypto project in which an entity affiliated with the Trump family holds a stake of about 60 percent. Sun later topped that with an additional $45 million investment.
Since then, Sun has been named an adviser to World Liberty and appeared onstage at a crypto conference in Dubai with Trump’s son Eric and Zach Witkoff, the son of Trump’s Middle East negotiator Steve Witkoff and a co-founder of World Liberty.
What is his relationship with the Chinese government?
Sun’s relationship with Beijing has been rocky for nearly a decade.
Peiwo, Sun’s first company, was removed from app stores after Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported in 2018 that some users were live-streaming pornographic content.
The next year, following the Buffett lunch debacle, Sun issued an apology on Chinese social media site Weibo, criticizing his “excessive self-promotion,” spurring speculation that he was in trouble with Chinese authorities. His Weibo account was later banned.
These days, he lists Geneva as his location on social media. But he appears to spend a significant amount of time in Hong Kong rather than in mainland China, which has become increasingly hostile to the virtual currency industry. In 2021, China banned all financial transactions involving cryptocurrency and all crypto mining. Many crypto entrepreneurs were forced to leave the country.
Why are some experts concerned about Trump’s crypto project?
Sun’s investment — and the SEC’s subsequent move to pause its case against him — illustrates the potential issues around conflict of interest at play in Trump’s crypto ventures, experts say.
Many crypto founders have either been convicted or are under investigation for financial crimes, noted Kapron, from GL insight, and appear to be trying to avoid arrest or punishment.
“I think you’d be remiss if you didn’t see that as a push to get closer to the Trump administration and get on the right side of the administration,” he said.
Todd White, a crypto lobbyist at Rulon & White Governance Strategies in Washington, said that these conflicts have led to “inconsistent” regulation of the crypto industry under the Trump administration, with entrepreneurs and companies who support Trump appearing to fare better than those who don’t.
The White House has argued the dinner, which they say Trump attended in his personal time, does not pose a conflict of interest because the president’s assets are in a blind trust managed by his sons.
White is also concerned about the lack of formal checks on the money flowing into the president’s crypto business, and the potential for issues likely foreign influence.
“We have to connect the dots better because this could get way out of control,” he said.
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What readers are saying
The comments express strong criticism of Justin Sun's approach to gaining attention in the crypto world, particularly through his association with Donald Trump. Many commenters view Sun's investments in Trump-related crypto projects as a form of corruption and manipulation, with... Show more
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