By CCN: In the past week or so TRON CEO Justin Sun teased his followers with multiple announcements concerning upcoming…er, announcements. His tweets were enough to launch the values of TRX and BitTorrent (BTT) to between 20% and 40% gains, cementing Sun’s reputation as crypto’s prime hype-man.
But just when you thought Justin Sun couldn’t get any worse…he goes and totally redeems himself! As part of Sun’s recently won $4.5 million lunch date with “rat poison squared” Warren Buffett, Sun can take half a dozen or so guests with him.
Now, Sun must assemble a team of the best minds in crypto to embark on a quest to save Buffett from himself, win the day for cryptocurrency aaaand… maybe pump the TRX coin price along the way.
However, that might be more difficult than first assumed. Here are three possible candidates for the Sun-Buffett showdown – and not all of them want to be involved.
1. Jack Ma of Alibaba
Justin Sun has a link to billionaire Jack Ma, but the Alibaba founder isn’t exactly a crypto fan. | Source: Shutterstock
When Justin Sun first broke onto the scene with TRON back in 2017, his entry was aided by a glowing recommendation from Alibaba’s Jack Ma. Alibaba is China’s $500 billion equivalent to Amazon, and its creator, Jack Ma, also founded Hupan University – a prestigious school for the entrepreneurial elite.
At least, that was the story told at the time. But since then, the timeline appears to have gotten a little mixed up. Sun had long claimed to be the “first millennial graduate” of Ma’s Hupan University, but this Yahoo article announced his graduation as recently as April 2018.
Then, following the Buffett news, and possibly in anticipation of the world’s news media coming crashing down on his Twitter page, Sun retweeted the following graphic.
Justin Sun’s Warren Buffett lunch is the culmination of a three-decade journey. | Source: Crypto Engineering/Twitter
Here his graduation date is listed as December 2018. Furthermore, this gushing Forbes piece from 2017 strongly pushes Sun as “the next Jack Ma,” and suggests he had already graduated Hupan at that time.
Regardless, Sun, who has no shortage of enemies in the crypto world, may have to turn to a major player like Ma if he has any hopes of making an impression on Warren Buffett. That’s assuming Ma would even remember Sun.
2. CZ (Changpeng Zhao) of Crypto Exchange Binance
The mastermind of the world’s largest crypto exchange already declined an invitation to Justin Sun’s Warren Buffett lunch date. | Source: Facebook/Binance
Binance’s Changpeng Zhao has been close to Justin Sun ever since the latter donated $3 million to the Binance charity fund in 2018. Binance was also instrumental in the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) of BitTorrent Token – the first of its kind in the post-ICO era. Sun said in a CCN interview:
“We’ve shared a long and meaningful partnership with Binance over the years, and on a personal level, CZ and I are good friends.”
Unfortunately, CZ recused himself from the meeting pretty soon after it was announced. Indeed, Sun offered him an invitation, but CZ was quick to confirm that he wouldn’t be attending. In his place, CZ recommended sending Anthony Pompliano, co-founder and partner of Morgan Creek Digital Assets.
In fairness, turning down the meeting was probably a smart move on CZ’s part. Binance is the busiest hub in the world for cryptocurrency trades. And it’s also the only platform out of the “real-10” exchanges without the conventional level of regulatory oversight. Also, Binance’s alleged tendency for manipulating volume figures probably would have made CZ a bad fit for this particular dinner party.
3. Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin
Crypto pioneer Vitalik Buterin loves to troll Tron on Twitter. | Source: Twitter
There’s a love-hate relationship between Justin Sun and Vitalik Buterin. Sun loves to associate his own project with Ethereum, and Vitalik hates it when he does.
In early April Sun teased a possible collaboration between TRON and Ethereum – one which appears as likely Bitcoin Cash collaborating with Bitcoin SV. Sun was joking on that occasion, but in the past he has made no secret of his intention to dethrone Ethereum from its position as king of the blockchain platforms.
Adding another millennial to the motley crew might be too much, but the truth is Buterin’s reserved personality would probably be a good counterweight to Sun’s brashness. This is a young man who frequently throws ice on the constant hype circulating in the crypto-sphere, and unlike Sun, has never engaged in price-pumping tactics on Twitter.
Vitalik Buterin might be the hero Justin Sun’s crack team needs at this point, but is this a job he really wants to take on? Buterin once quipped that, were Craig Wright truly revealed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, it would lower his opinion of Satoshi rather than raise his opinion of Wright.
Would an association with Justin Sun needlessly muddy the waters for the founder of the second-largest cryptocurrency project in the world?
Probably the Second-Worst Crypto Representative Possible
Besides Craig Wright, is there a single worst representative out there for the cryptocurrency space? TRON is a project allegedly founded on plagiarized code, and rife with controversy. From Justin Sun’s bot-army of fake followers on Twitter, to the complete lack of clarity concerning significant alleged criminal activity in his company.
I don’t know what would be worse for crypto overall – Buffett concluding that crypto is still rat-poison squared, or him changing his mind based on something he sees in TRON.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.
