Justin Sun

Justin Sun (; born July 30, 1990) is a Chinese-born businessman. He is the founder of TRON, the developer of Tronix (TRX) cryptocurrency and its blockchain, and a stablecoin named USDD. Sun owns Rainberry (formerly BitTorrent Inc.), the developer of BitTorrent protocol, and two cryptocurrency exchanges, Poloniex and HTX (formerly Huobi). From 2021 to 2023, Sun was the permanent representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization. In 2026, Sun reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in connection with a fraud investigation.

As of April 2026, Forbes ranks Sun as the 411th-richest person in the world, estimating his net worth at $8.5 billion. His net worth is largely held in cryptocurrency. While attending high school in Huizhou, Guangdong province, Sun, a fan of Han Han, won first prize in the ninth New Concept Writing Competition in 2007, which helped him secure a place at Peking University (PKU). He initially majored in Chinese before switching to history. He spent a year as an exchange student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was strongly influenced by professor Chan Kin-man.

At PKU, Sun started gaining public attention through his online writings at Renren , notably his criticism of the university’s "consultation program", which targeted academically underperforming students and those considered "radical" or "fragile". His online protest against the sentencing of Liu Xiaobo led to the suspension of his first Renren account in 2009. His image at the time was further enhanced by his journalism internship at the influential Southern Weekly. In 2011, he graduated at the top of his class in PKU's Department of History. Sun became active in pro-democracy activism among overseas Chinese. He was among the 28th group of signatories to Charter 08 and delivered a speech calling for freedom and democracy in China at a New York symposium organized by the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation . At UPenn, Sun also became interested in cryptocurrency and invested early in bitcoin. In 2015, he joined the inaugural cohort of students at Hupan University (now Zhejiang Hupan Entrepreneurship Research Center), founded by Jack Ma, and graduated in 2018. In 2019, Sun donated US$1.5 million to Hupan University.

Career Cryptocurrency In late 2013, Sun joined Ripple Labs as chief representative and adviser.

Sun founded the blockchain-based operating platform TRON and launched the TRX token in 2017. Sun is known for his high expectations of Chinese TRON employees, demanding they adopt the 996 working hour system (9 am to 9 pm 6 days a week). A cryptocurrency whitepaper Sun published attracted controversy following allegations that it was heavily derivative of earlier cryptocurrency whitepapers without any attribution. As of 2025, Sun controls the majority of TRX tokens in circulation.'

In late 2019, Sun acquired the crypto exchange Poloniex. He moved the company to the Seychelles, which has lax cryptocurrency regulation, and allegedly ordered the relaxing of the exchange's know your customer infrastructure. The Verge alleged in 2021 that Sun demanded that he should be given personal ownership of misplaced Poloniex customer funds that users accidentally sent to wrong wallet addresses, totaling about 300 bitcoin, despite the objections of Poloniex employees.

In October 2021, Sun participated in a $65 million funding round in Hong Kong-based Animoca, a maker of crypto and blockchain video games such as The Sandbox.

Sun purchased the cryptocurrency exchange HTX (formerly Huobi) in 2022.

In May 2025, Sun attended a private dinner hosted by Donald Trump at Trump National Golf Club for top investors in the $TRUMP meme coin, having spent over $40 million on the token and placing first on its public leaderboard.

In May 2026, the UK government sanctioned HTX for alleged violations of international sanctions against Russia.

Lawsuits and investigations In 2020, a civil lawsuit was filed against Sun by former TRON employees Lucasz Juraszek and Richard Hall, with allegations "ranging from fraud to harassment to whistleblower retaliation". While the filers sought a public trial, the judge granted Sun's request for private arbitration. In addition, eight celebrities were charged with astroturfing, where they promoted the cryptocurrencies without disclosing their sponsorship, including Akon, Ne-Yo, Austin Mahone, Soulja Boy, Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, Lil Yachty, and Michele Mason (Kendra Lust). All of the defendants except Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone settled their cases, making payments in excess of $400,000 without admitting liability.

In April 2026, Sun, the largest investor in World Liberty, filed a lawsuit against the Trump-associated company in federal court in California for "extortion", alleging that it had unlawfully frozen his holdings of WLFI tokens after they became tradable in September 2025, resulting in claimed losses of approximately $276 million. The lawsuit also alleged that World Liberty had threatened to "burn", or permanently destroy, the tokens held in Sun’s digital wallet. In May 2026, World Liberty filed a defamation lawsuit against Sun in a Florida state court, alleging that he had engaged in a public campaign to damage the company's reputation and improperly transferred and shorted WLFI tokens.

Diplomacy Sun was appointed Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Grenada, an island country of the West Indies, to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2021. As a result, Sun phased out of his daily roles at his crypto-related projects such as TRON in order to focus on his diplomatic role at the WTO in Geneva. Sun told Bloomberg he would use his role to advocate cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to countries and promote technology development in Grenada. Sun said the Caribbean has "become a very good place for entrepreneurship" because of its close proximity to the U.S., with less strict regulations regarding cryptocurrency.

In December 2021, Sun retired as a CEO of TRON to become a diplomat for Grenada.

In March 2023, Sun stepped down from his position as Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization, which followed the previous governing party of Grenada which had appointed him losing power following the general election the previous year.

In October 2024, Sun was elected as a "Speaker of Congress" and appointed as "Prime Minister" of Liberland, a micronation (self-proclaimed country) that claims to own (but does not control) a small region on the Danube river floodplain border between Serbia and Croatia.

Internet In 2014, Sun launched Peiwo, an app aspiring to become China's Snapchat that matched and connected users by analyzing 10-second voice samples as well interests. Peiwo has introduced a host of channels for users to make like-minded friends, with online games, talent shows and live streaming. The South China Morning Post described it as a "hook-up app", before canceling it to widespread surprise. In July, Caixin attributed the cancellation to Sun having been placed under border controls while Chinese authorities considered investigating him for suspected illegal fundraising, money laundering, pornography, and gambling-related offences. Sun denied the report and livestreamed from San Francisco on X, and Caixin further alleged that he had fled China despite having been under border controls since June 2018. Former employees told The Verge that Chinese authorities had pressured Sun to cancel the lunch because Buffett was a "capitalist pig symbol", particularly after he invited US president Donald Trump amid the China–US trade war. The Verge also reported that authorities raided TRON’s offices and detained Sun’s estranged father. Sun was joined by other cryptocurrency executives, including leaders of Litecoin, eToro, Huobi, and Binance Charity Foundation. At the dinner, Sun gifted Buffett a phone with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The money from the charity auction benefited the Glide Foundation, which Buffett's late wife Susan introduced to Buffett after volunteering there.

In December 2021, Sun announced that he had previously bid $28 million to be the first paying passenger on Blue Origin's first crewed mission into space on the New Shepard. Although he had won the auction, he was unable to attend the July 2021 flight due to a scheduling conflict. He flew to space in August 2025 aboard Blue Origin NS-34.

A 2022 report by The Verge quoted former TRON employees as saying that Sun "can never return to China". The report nevertheless noted that his "exact relationship with the Chinese authorities has been difficult to surmise", as an article by Sun about blockchain appeared on Xuexi Qiangguo, and he received a blockchain-related teaching appointment at the Central Party School in 2022. The report suggested that this apparent rapprochement may have been facilitated by his alleged connection to Luo Dan, a "special assistant" to the Panchen Lama. In the 2026 post on X, Sun implied that he could not go to mainland China, though he could be in Hong Kong.

In November 2024, Sun purchased one of the three limited edition rights to Comedian'', a 2019 conceptual artwork by Maurizio Cattelan consisting of a banana duct-taped to a wall, for $5.2 million ($6.2 million including fees) at an auction in New York. Shortly after the purchase he ate the banana onstage. Sun later pledged to buy 100,000 bananas from the New York street vendor who the banana was originally purchased from (reportedly for 25 cents).

In 2026, Sun sued actress Jing Tian and her parents at the Yanta District Court of Xi'an to recover more than ¥30 million that he described as a betrothal gift. Sun claimed that Jing had proposed to have a child through surrogacy but reneged on the egg-retrieval procedure and broke up with him after he refused to provide an additional US$50 million.