They shed light on Sun and his company’s financial dealings. This story also relies on hundreds of pages of internal Tron documents that were leaked to me. One source has firsthand knowledge of Sun’s businesses for other reasons. They are current and former employees of Sun’s various ventures across his cryptocurrency empire, in China and the US.
Sun learned early that in the world of cryptocurrency, heaps of money can be made with ease, so long as you’re ready to exit before it catches up to you.įor this story, 15 sources spoke to me on the condition their names be withheld because they fear retaliation from Justin Sun. He was bound for San Francisco, completing the first of his many escapes. It pivoted its sky blue fuselage onto the runway, the jet engines blasted, and Sun was airborne. (Changpeng Zhao did not respond to a request for comment.)Īt 4PM in Seoul, Sun boarded his flight, and aircraft marshals waved the Korean Air plane across the tarmac. Over social media, they gave the impression it was a business trip. But at some point after the ICO ban, Zhao made clear his relationship with Justin Sun was not personal, saying, “We have only talked business and haven’t really ‘hung out’ in any way.” But as recently as 2019, Zhao and Sun vacationed together on the shores of Lake Geneva. “They were in it together,” a former employee told me.Īllegedly, Zhao learned of the impending government ban from his own connections. Sun had been tipped off by Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, one of the world’s busiest cryptocurrency exchanges. Sun pushed TRX to finish its token sale the day before the ban was announced. But the reason for his getaway was simple: he likely knew the ICO ban was coming and went through with it anyway. Sun’s true escape route from Beijing to Seoul remains cloaked in rumor. Hype man of the century Previously, Chris Harland-Dunaway reported on Justin Sun’s acquisition of BitTorrent - and how the crypto mogul turned it into a self-promotion machine for himself. Sources who heard him tell this story say Justin believed he was a fugitive and was ready to take off at a moment’s notice. The Chinese government’s ICO ban was why, a week later, Sun was waiting for a flight in Incheon International Airport. People were swindled so frequently the United States Securities and Exchange Commission could barely file charges fast enough. These were “exit scams” or “pump-and-dumps,” and all told, they bilked crypto buyers for billions of dollars. People buy into initial coin offerings for all sorts of reasons: sometimes because the coin’s underlying blockchain technology is promising, or sometimes because they’re speculating that a cryptocurrency’s value might rise astronomically over time, like Bitcoin has.īut in many cases, the coin founders immediately sold all the tokens they held for a vast sum of money, crashing its value in the process and every other buyer’s investment. The state claimed ICOs were vehicles for financial fraud, pyramid schemes, and other illegal and criminal activities - a credible claim because, in 2017, hundreds of new and highly dubious cryptocurrency tokens were being introduced. The problem for Sun was that the Chinese government, just days before, had banned ICOs entirely. In fact, his company, Tron, introduced a coin called TRX - a huge success, selling out quickly for $70 million.
But Sun wasn’t anxious about the money he stood to gain if it took off or what he’d lose if the token flopped. It’s the first time cryptocurrency traders have the opportunity to buy a brand-new token. An ICO, or initial coin offering, is like an initial public offering for a new stock. It was September 2017, an early height of the crypto craze, and Sun had every reason to be nervous after his first ICO. Justin Sun, a budding Chinese cryptocurrency mogul, walked through the shiny lofted atrium of the departure terminal at South Korea’s Incheon International Airport.
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