Sun Yuchen: 8 Years in the Crypto World, a Tale of Two Cities

Editor's Note: Over the past few years, Justin Sun has almost become the "last man standing" in the crypto world, navigating through regulatory crackdowns, market crashes, and top figures in the industry falling one after another, always standing firm at the industry's core. Recently, his name once again took the spotlight, and the drama continues.

First, he made headlines by purchasing a banana for a staggering $6.2 million, a ludicrous "splurge" that made it to the headlines of major mainstream media outlets. More recently, he found himself riding high as he connected with the Trump family. Then, yesterday, Justin Sun engaged in a public dispute with Huobi's founder, Li Lin, accusing him of concealing financial loopholes during a settlement process, leaving a $30 million "funding gap" that had to be covered out of his own pocket. 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 theme: wealth, power, and influence. This is a vivid microcosm of the past decade in the crypto world, and Justin Sun has always stood at the center of this grand play.

The editor-in-chief of the well-known US crypto media CoinDesk was also fired before Christmas.

What led to his dismissal was an article that was taken down by his own parent company. 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 events related to TRON and Justin Sun over the past two years and used the title "I Watched Justin Sun Eat the World's Most Expensive Banana, I Really Don't Understand" because, after all, who doesn't enjoy seeing the media mock a billionaire? According to CoinDesk's staff, Justin Sun reached out in the past, pressured them to take down the article, which directly led to the dismissal of three employees from America's most renowned crypto media, CoinDesk, including editor-in-chief Kevin Reynolds.

Looking at it from Sun's perspective, this is indeed infuriating. This is because TRON is one of the two top-tier sponsors of the Consensus Hong Kong conference scheduled for March, and the Consensus conference is one of CoinDesk's main sources of revenue. Anyone facing a situation where someone is taking their money and insulting them probably can't remain calm, especially since this article didn't have as detailed evidence as the one CoinDesk published when exposing the FTX issue.

In 2022, CoinDesk "fired the first shot" towards the then-soaring FTX by publishing an article revealing the balance sheet of the crypto market maker Alameda. After this article, the crypto market saw a roaring "butterfly effect," a crash, numerous institutions went bust, and unexpectedly, among those toppled dominoes was CoinDesk itself, with DCG (CoinDesk's former parent company) facing bankruptcy due to the fallout from FTX's collapse, eventually leading DCG to sell its media outlet CoinDesk at a cheap price, with the buyer being the trading platform Bullish. It was this Bullish that took down the controversial article and fired CoinDesk's editor-in-chief.

Compared to Justin Sun's acquisition of BitTorrent two years ago, the Bullish trading platform does not seem to be a well-known name. Most people who are familiar with Bullish know it because of EOS.

In 2018, there was a $4.2 billion-raised company called Block.one. As its parent company, they created the "veteran star public chain" EOS and kicked off a year-long ICO. Several years later, Block.one "separated" from EOS, taking the $4.2 billion with them. They launched a compliant route trading platform, which is Bullish.

In the era of public chains, during the same period of ICOs, both Tron (TRON) and EOS were entangled yet admired. Back then, the combined market value of Tron (TRON) and EOS was less than 10% of Ethereum's (Ethereum, the second-largest public chain and cryptocurrency after Bitcoin). The best way to overthrow the Ethereum mountain was through a temporary "alliance." Sun Yuchen said in an interview back then: "Tron (TRON) is Liu Bang, EOS is Xiang Yu, and Ethereum is the Qin Dynasty. He needs to defeat Ethereum first, then divide the world with EOS."

Seven years later, 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 analogy, Sun Yuchen's Ethereum Qin Dynasty 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, EOS's parent company cannot be considered a failure. What many people do not know is that EOS's parent company, Block.one, currently holds the second-highest amount of Bitcoin after MicroStrategy, a publicly listed company. They own a total of 160,000 BTC. Not only that, Block.one also holds nearly $2.2 billion worth of US Treasury bonds. It is worth noting that most of MSTR's BTC was purchased through stock issuance. As a publicly listed company, MSTR's BTC belongs to all publicly traded investors. In contrast, Block.one as a private company, all assets are exclusively owned by themselves. So, where did the initial money to purchase these assets come from? Let's go back to 2017 when EOS started its ICO fundraising and raised $4.2 billion. This was Block.one's seed money. In the following years, Block.one did not invest all the money in development but instead accumulated a large amount of assets. The biggest expenditure during these years was the $24 million fine paid to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and this money was definitely worth it. It immediately resolved the problem of EOS raising funds from the public without registering with regulatory agencies. In today's terms, it allowed Block.one to fully comply. Until 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, much like how almost no one remembers what MicroStrategy's main business is, even though EOS fell into obscurity in 2019. However, Block.one's $16 billion worth of Bitcoin reserves can still thrive today, and they have launched their own exchange platform, Bullish, seeking listing and licensing on the Nasdaq and in Hong Kong.

After EOS, the most liquid and profitable track in the crypto world, the exchange platform, has become the current main business after its parent company's "five years of passive gains." This is another coincidental decision following EOS and Tron.

In 2019, Justin Sun acquired the well-known cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex. After taking over, Justin Sun quickly removed strict KYC enforcement, significantly increasing the platform's user base.

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.

In July 2021, Block.one launched the Bullish exchange platform. Initially funded by Block.one with $100 million in cash, 164,000 BTC, and 20 million EOS, and after completing an additional $300 million strategic investment, Bullish Global now has over $10 billion in cash and digital asset capital. Notable investors leading this $300 million financing include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Hong Kong tycoon Adrian Cheng.

From the beginning, Bullish's positioning has been clear: scale is not important, but compliance is. This is because Bullish's ultimate goal is not to make profits in the crypto world but to go public on the U.S. stock market.

Prior to official operation, Bullish reached an agreement with publicly traded companies such as Far Peak to invest $840 million to acquire 9% of the company and merge for $25 billion, aiming to achieve a SPAC merger and reduce the traditional IPO threshold.

Bullish's CEO is a professional manager named Farley, who has a strong compliance background. He was appointed as the COO and president of the New York Stock Exchange during which he established strong connections with Wall Street giants, CEOs, and institutional investors. Another noteworthy fact is that during his tenure at the NYSE, under his leadership, the exchange created a Bitcoin index and made a private equity investment in a Bitcoin wallet called Coinbase at the time.

However, compliance turned out to be much harder than they had imagined. After receiving a regulatory warning in the United States, Bullish's original SPAC merger agreement was terminated in 2022, and its 18-month "public listing plan" was temporarily put on hold. Bullish has also started exploring other compliance avenues, such as acquiring FTX and currently focusing more resources in Hong Kong, where it has submitted a virtual asset trading platform license application to the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. Currently, Bullish has 260 employees worldwide, with 110 based in Hong Kong and the rest distributed in the United States, Singapore, Gibraltar, and other locations.

This ground-up compliance approach can ensure compliance from the start, but its drawbacks are quite apparent. It is inefficient, and while major exchanges like Huobi rapidly attracted users globally, Bullish was still struggling with its trading volume and brand recognition.

Like most trading platforms, Bullish has also engaged in some media buying. In a paid special report in The Wall Street Journal, Bullish claimed that "since commencing operations in November 2021, the trading volume has exceeded $300 billion, consistently ranking among the top three globally in Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading volume."

However, objective data seems not to corroborate the marketing message. According to CoinGecko's data, the 24-hour "normalized trading volume" of Bullish (excluding the common suspicious wash trades seen on cryptocurrency exchanges) rarely surpasses $40 million in daily trading volume. At the time of writing this article, Bullish's 24-hour trading volume is $27 million, significantly lower than the reported average daily trading volume of $700 million by Bullish.

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

In addition to its own operational shortcomings, another reason for Bullish's slow development is its excessive focus on compliance. The most obvious example is that all stablecoin trading pairs on Bullish use USDC (a stablecoin created through a collaboration 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 increasing scrutiny from the US SEC, the team is considering relocating its headquarters to El Salvador. With its dominant position waning, the compliant USDC has seen a surge in trading volume over the past six months. According to a recent report by Kaiko, USDC's trading volume on CEXs is on the rise, reaching a historic high of $380 billion in March 2024, far surpassing the 2023 average of $80 billion. Two prominent trading platforms, Bybit and Bullish, account for 60% of the USDC trading volume on exchanges, making them the two largest centralized platforms for USDC trading.

Nevertheless, USDT remains the reigning king in the crypto world. As of the time of writing, USDC's total supply stands at 46 billion, while USDT's total supply is at 140 billion.

When USDT was first launched, Tether company chose to initially release USDT on the Bitcoin's Layer 2 protocol, Omni Layer. However, issues became apparent as users found Omni to be too slow, and the minimum transfer of USDT on the OMNI version required 4 USDT at least, and sometimes even up to 10, making it uneconomical for small transactions.

Therefore, Tether shifted its focus to Ethereum, the second-largest public blockchain at the time when Bitcoin was soaring. Ethereum somewhat addressed this issue, but the pursuit of faster speeds and lower fees was ongoing. Consequently, Tether began issuing USDT on more public blockchains. Subsequently, in the cryptocurrency industry, it became a recognized indicator of mainstream acceptance for a public blockchain when USDT began issuing assets on it. A trove of assets minted on a certain public blockchain by USDT signaled the industry giant Tether's acknowledgment of the security and user-friendliness of that public blockchain. Moreover, the on-chain users and fee revenue brought by USDT were highly coveted by various public blockchains, and this realization was also seen by Tron and EOS in the past.

In April 2019, Tether issued the TRC-20 version of USDT on the TRON network. How Justin Sun managed to secure Tether remains a mystery.

Six months later, EOS, tardy to the party, also issued 5 million USDT on its mainnet. Optimistically speaking, the EOS version of USDT trading took a further step, with faster speeds and much quicker transaction times compared to TRON. However, the pace of the crypto industry is much faster than that of traditional industries, and at this juncture of the fork in the road, 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, launching activities such as "Multi-Million Dollar Interest Subsidies."

At that time, Sun Yuchen and CZ were still in their mutually beneficial "honeymoon period," cooperating closely. Big Brother Binance stepped in to support TRON, launching an activity — Deposit TRC20-USDT and Earn 16% APY. In addition to Binance, several other exchanges, including OKEx and Huobi, announced their support for TRC20-USDT.

Sun Yuchen himself frequently posted on Weibo, almost daily sharing TRC20-USDT-related content, putting a lot of effort into promoting "TRON's dominance as the stablecoin public chain."

"The USDT issued on the Tron blockchain will soon become the world's largest stablecoin," Sun Yuchen expressed full confidence in this matter.

On the other hand, EOS proceeded at a leisurely pace, completely wasting its unique advantages. Brock Pierce, one of the co-founders of Block.one and also a co-founder of Tether, did not seize the opportunity, even though EOS had a strategic advantage. EOS community KOLs from the early days couldn't help but lament, "I have always valued USDT and its development. What I was most looking forward to in the early days of the EOS ecosystem was the EOS version of USDT. However, unfortunately, Block.one did not push for it, and major exchanges did not support it. It was not until the launch of eosfinex on Bitfinex that it was introduced, but by then, it was too late."

Moreover, when transferring EOS, users need to rent various resources and fill in a memo, which baffles some new users. The operational experience is not as convenient as that of Ethereum and Bitcoin, which is also a reason that affects the popularity of EOS.

"Following the growth in demand, more EOS-USDT may also be issued. However, it will definitely not be issued in the billions or tens of billions of US dollars, because the entire network value of EOS or the value transferred is only so much," said an analyst at the time.

And so, as the bullets flew for a while, EOS missed the best opportunity to take down TRON, and now, according to data on the Tether website, as of the time of writing, the USDT issued on the EOS chain is 85.25 million, while this number is 59.7 billion on the TRON chain.

Data Source: USDT Website

On October 22, 2020, an internal staff member of a certain EOS wallet spread across the network a passionate letter addressing the issues in the EOS ecosystem titled "An Open Letter to Block.one." In the midst of a long rant against Block.one and BM, TRON's founder Justin Sun was unexpectedly "praised": "The foundation's point of view, I appreciate Justin Sun very much, whether from the perspective of a tech geek like BM, whether he is plagiarizing or not, at least he is responsible for TRX holders, taking real actions to contribute to the Tron public chain, especially in terms of operation promotion and support for Tron project teams."

Today, USDT has already become a veritable "peer-to-peer digital cash," realizing Satoshi Nakamoto's vision ahead of BTC. Russia's top brass used USDT to bypass trade restrictions and purchase goods. Since the comprehensive sanctions began in 2022, Russian companies engaged in bulk trades of nickel, steel, lumber, and other commodities have faced various challenges: receiving payment for goods, purchasing equipment and raw materials, and more. However, USDT pegged 1:1 to the US dollar is difficult to sanction, 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 with the next hot token. They usually buy and hold USDT, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the dollar, with a market cap of $138 billion, which most citizens see as a secure means of storing wealth, helping to withstand Argentina's staggering 276% inflation rate.

Cryptocurrency exchange points scattered across 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 drastic devaluation of the Turkish Lira, with USDT being a preferred choice.

A cryptocurrency exchange in Istanbul, image source Reddit

Additionally, some Chinese traders in Yiwu, after earning foreign exchange, also settle in USDT. A research team once conducted a survey in Yiwu and found that almost all merchants received inquiries from buyers about using cryptocurrency for payments. Compared to more volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Tether's USDT stablecoin, pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar, is more convenient for import and export calculations and settlement.

In Cambodia, there is a "gray market version of Alipay" called Huione Pay with official local backing. Established in 2014, the platform, initially focused on foreign exchange, is headquartered on Norodom Boulevard in Phnom Penh, just steps away from the Royal Palace, occupying one of the most prime locations in the city. In its foreign exchange and guarantee services, USDT is a crucial channel.

　Huione Group Headquarters

Furthermore, the use of USDT is widespread in various markets, such as purchasing channels for accessing the internet without restrictions and platforms to buy Twitter followers.

For example, the favorite platform among international students for streaming pirated videos, iYifan, includes USDT as a payment option for member recharges, with its only supported network being TRC-20, the token format of USDT on the TRON network. Apart from TRON, USDT currently operates on several other mainstream chain networks. However, iYifan only supports the TRON network and even provides an 80% discount when making payments through this method.

"iYifan has a very high usage rate among overseas Chinese. It may be the largest pirated video website in terms of global user base, with over 6 million independent users in 2020, reaching at least 10 million users after the epidemic outbreak. A dedicated iYifan user introduced this to us," said one user.

Today, much of the USDT transfer demand is being met by the TRON network. Until November last year, the USDT supply on the TRON network was the highest among all chains, with Ethereum being the next highest. Although recently the USDT supply on Ethereum has surpassed that of TRON, the difference is still small, with only a $600 million gap.

According to blockchain data platform Dune Data, both the cross-chain receiving and sending volumes of USDT on the TRON network are higher than on other networks. The daily receiving and sending volumes on the TRON network are around $7 million, while on Ethereum, they are around $600,000, making it nearly 11 times lower.

Data Source: Dune

While Bitcoin was still aspiring to become a financial trading asset through ETFs, USDT had already achieved the Mass Adoption coveted in the Web3 community, making TRON the biggest beneficiary after Tether. Related reads: "Redefining Tron: A USDT-Dedicated Chain", "Why Did TRX Market Cap Skyrocket? TRON's Stablecoin Dominance".

In the stablecoin market, TRON is undoubtedly the "King in the Middle." Looking back five years from today, this decision has established TRON's 99% market share.

Big transaction volume naturally leads to higher revenue. In terms of revenue, TRON's total revenue in 2024 was $2.12 billion, with a single-day total revenue reaching a historic high 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

Amid TRON's current glory, Tether has added a touch of gloom to EOS. In June of last year, Tether decided to stop issuing USDT on EOS, stating that it 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."

Following the launch of the EOS mainnet, it did not flourish as expected but instead faced frequent vulnerabilities, giving rise to a specialized code audit security industry due to frequent code vulnerabilities. BM casually modified the EOS "constitution," triggering a severe community trust crisis. The development of EOS took a nosedive, user base shrank, key developers left one after another, and the price of the EOS token plummeted from $23 in May 2018 to the current $0.6. Although midway, "gambling and high-risk" applications attracted a large number of users, the value they generated was far below that of TRON. "Game" applications failed to gain popularity as they did on Ethereum.

By 2019, "EOS had already committed suicide," a sentiment now shared by many cryptocurrency OGs. Mismanagement was also a significant issue for Block.one. From the perspective of BM, the founder of EOS at the time, he was Emperor Wei Cao Mao, and BB, the founder of Block.one, was Sima Zhao. Senior appointments at Block.one were entirely based on personal relationships, with key positions like Chief Strategy Officer and Communications Director held by BB's childhood friends or family members, lacking external challenges and professional perspectives.

The inevitable outcome was BM's departure, leading to a continuous decline in technical development and code quality, and a massive slump in EOS's market performance. Block.one even prepared to sell a large amount of EOS, causing dissatisfaction across the entire EOS ecosystem, from investors to developers to nodes, as everyone was highly dissatisfied with Block.one.

The EOS Foundation, representing the community, stepped forward to negotiate with Block.one. However, after a month of discussions and exploring various options, no agreement was reached. Eventually, the EOS Foundation, together with 17 nodes, revoked Block.one's position of power and ousted them from the EOS management team. Without its parent company, EOS started to resemble more and more like a DAO.

Following the separation between EOS and Block.one, the EOS community engaged in a years-long legal battle to determine the ownership of the funds raised initially. So far, Block.one still retains ownership and control of the funds.

One of the biggest questions on everyone's mind is how Block.one utilized the $4.2 billion raised during the EOS ICO.

In an email from March 19, 2019, BM disclosed part of the answer 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 US government bonds, referred to in the email as "liquid fiat assets."

Some information about the invested funds is publicly available: companies like the gaming company Forte, the NFT platform Immutable, and a resort hotel in Puerto Rico are part of the investment portfolio. In essence, the invested companies share a common trait: they have little association with EOS.

Before Bullish became a core business, Block.one still held a trump card: the social product Voice, deployed based on the EOSIO smart contract. Voice is the only product directly related to EOS. To develop Voice, Block.one invested $150 million, with the most significant expense being a $30 million purchase for a domain name from MicroStrategy, the publicly traded company known for holding the most Bitcoin.

However, it seemed to be a curse of fate. The first Voice launch event lasted only half an hour, falling short of expectations and receiving much disappointment, leading to a drop in the EOS price. Over half a year later, when the Voice iOS version was launched on the Apple Store, various malfunctions and Bdangsug occurred on the same day. The Voice website displayed "Error 1020," stating that the site is "using a security service to protect itself from online attacks." EOS holders were thoroughly disappointed, and Voice finally announced its gradual closure in September 2023.

Project Launched by Block.one

The thunder is loud but the rain is small, which seems to be Block.one's consistent style of investment in projects. After that, Block.one did not make any major investment moves and began to completely lie low. Today, Block.one holds 164,000 bitcoins, which means its wealth has grown from $3 billion in 2019 to $16 billion now, a five-fold increase, making it a master of liquidity management.

While Block.one is hoarding bitcoins, Justin Sun, on the other hand, is jokingly referred to as the "E-guards" trading master. In 2020, Justin Sun's on-chain assets remained at around $300 million, but in just one year, this number multiplied by 23 times to reach $7 billion.

Data Source: Arkm

"If Justin Sun does not have a professional research team, then he is a very successful trader." Someone in the community commented on him: "Both topping and bottoming are Justin Sun's strengths."

In addition to selling over 100,000 Ethereum at a price of $3,674 in the past few months, in 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 continued to fall to around $1,500.

In addition to trading, Justin Sun, who has been active on social media for years, is also an on-chain degenerate, active in the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) field, excelling in arbitrage and mining. Simply put, DeFi mining is a bit like traditional finance's "high-yield time deposit," where users deposit their cryptocurrency into decentralized exchange pools to earn interest.

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

Sun Ge's position in Pendle before, sourced from Ai Yi

Using the traditional financial market's yield as an example, the yield of US Treasury bonds is usually between 3-5%, while the bank deposit interest rate is even lower, possibly less than 1%. In comparison, the yields of several DeFi mining projects Sun Ge participated in may seem somewhat aggressive to traditional finance people: Ether.fi: By holding until maturity, Justin Sun can earn a 1% return in 22 days, which is an annualized 17.33% return; Puffer: This investment has a higher annualized yield, reaching 18.93%; Kelp: Slightly lower, but still with a 14.33% annualized return.

Similar to Sun Ge's investment style, compared to the more low-key approach with Block.one, TRON's development appears to be more bold. From TRON's project progress, Sun Ge has invested a significant amount of funds and resources over the past few years, ultimately successfully leading TRX into the "billion-dollar market cap club."

TRON's daily income increased 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 set historical highs in price, with only SOL, BNB, TON, and OKB seemingly recognizable. TRX is also one of them, even achieving a historical high before Ethereum.

Today, TRON has a market cap of $20 billion, while EOS has a market cap of $1.5 billion, only 1/3 of the fundraising amount at that time.

And the funds raised by TRON back then were only one-tenth of EOS's.

Let's go back to 2017 when these two blockchains began.

At that time, the crypto industry went through the ICO boom and the 94 crash, starting the "regulatory liquidation year" of cryptocurrency. The price of Bitcoin dropped from a high of $19,870 to around $3,000, Ethereum began preparing for its 2.0 upgrade two to three years after its launch, Binance leaped to become the world's largest exchange, and it was still 2 years before Solana emerged.

That was 2017, when Ethereum's two major competitors almost simultaneously stepped onto the historical stage. Sun Ge, just past his 27th birthday, set aside his original social app, found a few classmates from Peking University, caught the tailwind of the big shots, and returned to the crypto world full of ambition to build a TRON chain; on the other side, BM, who even Satoshi Nakamoto had criticized in the past, abandoned his previous two projects, teamed up with marketing guru BB, and planned to create the first-generation Ethereum killer and blockchain 3.0.

In August 2017, TRON was late to the ICO game compared to EOS, starting its ICO two months after EOS but finishing fundraising nine months earlier due to the arrival of "9/4." Chinese projects and exchanges fell silent, quickly trying to escape, swearing never to touch blockchain again, from ancestors to descendants.

In later recollections, Justin Sun described the scene at the time: "For those demanding refunds, it was like scenes from 'The Walking Dead' or 'Train to Busan.' As soon as the glass door opened, you were trampled to death." The community demanded Sun to quickly refund the money, with people coming to block the door holding knives to their throats, saying, 'Either spill your blood, or spill mine; just immediately send our Ethereum back."

That was TRON's most chaotic period, with most of the early team members gone, and partners quitting due to concerns for personal safety.

"My 6-year entrepreneurial journey, the first three years were basically wasted," said Justin Sun. At the end of the ICO, TRON had raised a total of $4 billion, but there was not much left after refunds.

One man's meat is another man's poison.

On the other side, EOS, with both excellent technology and idealism, raised $4.2 billion during a year-long ICO. Not only that, they were well-prepared on the regulatory front, with a strong legal team. Most of the ICO participants were Chinese and Koreans, with less financing from the US. When later pursued by the SEC, Block.one only paid a $24 million fine. They were lucky because during the same period, Telegram's TON project, pursued by the SEC, was directly halted, with a $1.7 billion token issuance plan. As all team members had US identities, the Chinese 94 regulation incident had almost no impact on EOS.

The starkly different treatment: "I only stole a corn cob, but they bombarded me with cannons," Sun once described his situation.

The first year of EOS went smoothly. However, in the second half of 2018, the EOS price kept falling to new lows repeatedly, with rumors in the community about BM planning to leave EOS, until BM actually left in 2019.

It is said that at that time, some large holders were extremely angry, especially those who had followed BM since 2013, feeling abandoned by BM. Out of resentment, they set up a Telegram group to discuss how to deal with BM, with some even offering a 100 bitcoin bounty for BM's assassination via the dark web. This prompted BM to quickly rejoin the EOS community TG group, providing advice to the community inside and avoiding showing up in real life for a long time.

In addition, with the strong regulation of the SEC, in recent years, both EOS and Block.one have been cautious and constrained, unable to make significant moves.

Speaking of regulation, this is something Sun Yuchen is somewhat proud of: "I am very good at dealing with regulations." After all, besides Sun Yuchen, perhaps no one knows the truth and details of that year, how did he deal with the 94 regulations? Was he really under control at that time? Did he go to South Korea only after hearing wind of it? And how did he eventually bypass the control?

But in all versions of the story, there is a common point, that is, Sun Yuchen understands regulation very well. On July 25, 2019, Sun Yuchen issued an apology letter, expressing gratitude and apologies, repeatedly emphasizing "caring for and respecting my leaders and regulatory authorities." In addition to this, Sun Yuchen began to look for a place to settle in various "small countries" around the world: in 2021, he served as the permanent WTO representative and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Grenada; and was elected as the Prime Minister of Liberland.

Recently, Sun Yuchen has been riding high.

Unlike the small countries he had previously dealt with, recently he has gotten involved with the world's largest country, the family of former U.S. President Donald Trump. In November of last year, Sun Yuchen announced that he would purchase $30 million worth of World Liberty tokens, and this World Liberty has a strong background as a Defi project launched by the Trump family.

For ordinary investors, there is not much attraction in owning World Liberty tokens, as they cannot share in company profits or resell them. It is said that of the initial $30 million raised, 75% went directly into Trump's company account. This looks more like a donation compared to an investment, in other words, it is a good opportunity to make a political contribution.

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

The big brother on the list, Sun Yuchen, successfully became an advisor to the project, and World Liberty gradually purchased TRON (TRX) tokens to enrich its treasury. There are also rumors that Sun Yuchen's shadow can be seen in the virtual currency $TRUMP issued by Trump on the eve of taking office as President, and Sun Yuchen's attitude on personal social media remains neutral.

From the current results, it can be seen that, compared to other big names in the crypto industry, Justin Sun has shown remarkable flexibility under regulatory pressure. FTX founder SBF is destined to spend time in prison, while CZ has temporarily "settled" his freedom post-conviction with 4.3 billion dollars and a few months of prison life. Meanwhile, TRON's users remain on-chain without the KYC requirements of a trading platform. The only issue regulators could identify is related to sanction funds and money laundering in TRON's USDT transactions. However, since Tether is the issuer of USDT and TRON merely provides the infrastructure, service providers will not face issues ahead of Tether's regulatory actions.

Eight years ago, Justin Sun returned to China to start his business, proclaiming in a speech, "The standard by which I measure a person is how much money they have made." What he said is indeed what he has done. Setting aside the loftiness of a literary youth, Justin Sun embarked on a path that is pragmatic to the point of being almost ruthless in its pursuit of "making money."

Today, eight years later, 35-year-old Justin Sun holds assets worth 20 billion dollars in his on-chain wallet, with rumors pegging his net worth at 100 billion dollars. He can casually spend 6.2 million dollars to buy a banana artwork, having maximized his use of the rules, leveraged resources, and won this game of "pumping coins" that he set for himself.

Even more intriguing is that at every fork in the road, there is EOS and Block.one, which have always taken the opposite path of TRON. Today, they hold 16.4 million bitcoins worth 16 billion dollars in their accounts.

And so fate has brought about a somewhat absurd "convergence in divergence." TRON and EOS have also scripted a tale of two cities in the crypto era.