Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun now has a $100,000 Trump-branded watch on his arm, but he’s no stranger to the high life.
The billionaire was one of 220 top backers of President Donald Trump’s meme coin, $TRUMP, who were invited to a special dinner with the president on May 22.
At the event, Sun said he was gifted a Trump Tourbillon watch, which sells for $100,000 — another of the Trump family’s private business interests in addition to cryptocurrency.
According to Forbes’ real-time net worth tracker, the 34-year-old founder of Tron is estimated to be worth around $8.5 billion.
Here’s everything to know about Sun — from his legal troubles to his purchase of a duct-taped banana.
Sun’s early life and education
Sun grew up in a rural province of China and left home at a young age to study the strategy game “Go” in Wuhan, The Verge reported.
Sun graduated from Peking University with a bachelor’s degree in history in 2011. Two years later, he earned a master’s degree in political economy from the University of Pennsylvania.
Sun then attended Hupan University — a Chinese business school started by Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma in 2015 — where he wrote a thesis on the blockchain industry, titled “The Birth of a Decentralized Internet.”
Sun was the youngest member of Hupan’s inaugural class, which included 30 students whom Ma recruited because he believed they could revolutionize the Chinese business world, the South China Morning Post reported. Sun graduated from Hupan in 2018.
Sun’s oldest Instagram photo shows him receiving a certificate from Ma. The caption reads, “Inspired by the best to shape the future for the better. “
Sun’s rise in the crypto world
Sun worked at San Francisco-based crypto company, Ripple Labs, a cryptocurrency startup that has received backing from Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and other blue-chip investors.
In 2013, Sun founded a social chat room app called Peiwo. The app matched users with each other based on their interests and 10-second audio clips. However, China ultimately kicked Peiwo off the Android and Apple app stores and shut it down for disrupting “socialist values,” The Verge reported.
In 2017, Sun founded Tron, a blockchain company with its own cryptocurrency that is “dedicated to building the infrastructure for a truly decentralized internet.” Tron says its network has over 308 million users on the blockchain and has had over 10.4 billion transactions.
Less than a year later, Tron acquired BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file-sharing service, for a reported $126 million.
In 2022, Sun joined the Global Advisory Board of cryptocurrency exchange HTX, then known as Huobi Global.
Personal life and Warren Buffett
Sun has amassed more than 3.8 million followers on X and 240,000 Instagram followers, where he has posted pictures of himself posing with celebrities such as Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant.
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Forbes included Sun in its 30 under 30 Asia list for Consumer Technology in 2017, and more recently, the outlet featured Sun as its digital daily cover in March of this year.
In 2019, Sun bid $4.57 million on an eBay-sponsored charity lunch with Warren Buffett. Sun said he planned to use the meal to convert Buffett, a notorious skeptic of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, into a true believer. Buffett has said bitcoin has “no unique value” and will ultimately become worthless, and derided it as a “delusion” and “probably rat poison squared.”
Sun postponed the dinner with Buffett, citing kidney stones, which sparked conspiracy theories that he was being pressured by China. But months later, Sun finally had his dinner with Buffett in January 2020, inviting eToro founder and CEO Yoni Assia, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, and other crypto advocates to dine with them.
Legal troubles and investment in World Liberty Financial
In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against Sun and three of his companies — Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation, and Rainberry.
The federal agency accused Sun of offering and selling crypto asset securities without proper registration. Sun is also facing allegations of fraud for manipulating the market price of his cryptocurrency, TRX.
Sun was additionally charged with not disclosing how much he compensated celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, and Soulja Boy to promote his cryptocurrency, which would have violated federal securities laws.
In December 2024, Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, making him the largest investor in the new venture backed by Trump and his family. On February 26, the SEC filed a motion to pause its case against Sun and allowed a 60-day period to explore a potential settlement.
Since then, Sun has invested an additional $45 million in WLF. On January 22, Sun posted on X that if he “made any money in cryptocurrency, all credit goes to President Trump.”
A flashy lifestyle
In November 2024, Sun purchased Maurizio Cattelan’s conceptual artwork titled Comedian, which consisted of a banana duct-taped to a wall, for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction.
The sale of the highly divisive piece significantly exceeded its estimated value of $1 to $1.5 million.
Shortly after the acquisition, Sun consumed the banana during a press event in Hong Kong, stating that “the real value is the concept itself.” He said that the act was not about destroying the artwork but about highlighting its ephemeral nature.
At the live event, Sun also pledged to purchase 100,000 bananas from the New York street vendor who sold the original fruit used in the artwork.
“To thank Mr. Shah Alam, I’ve decided to buy 100,000 bananas from his stand in New York’s Upper East Side,” Sun wrote on X.
This isn’t the only time Sun splurged on artwork.
In December 2021, he bought a Joker-themed NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club Tron collection for $15 million, one of the most expensive NFT purchases.
Sun also spent $78.4 million on Giacometti’s cast bronze sculpture Le Nez, adding to his collection of a $20 million Picasso portrait of Marie-Thérese, a triptych of “fright wig” portraits by Andy Warhol for $2 million, and KAWS’ Untitled (Kimpsons) for $323,647, Artnet reported.
Aside from art, Sun also spent $28 million to secure a seat on a Blue Origin flight to space, which he revealed after winning the bid at auction for the first crewed mission on the New Shepard rocket.
Samantha Delouya contributed to an earlier version of this post.
