'I measure a person by how much money they have earned.' This was what Sun Yuchen said eight years ago when he returned to start his business.

What he said, he indeed did. Since becoming the legal representative of the 'Accompany Me App' in 2014, the pragmatic to the point of being cold Sun Yuchen has always harbored a dream of a business empire in his heart; he aims to maximize the use of rules to leverage resources and win his game.

And today, eight years later, Sun Yuchen has indeed realized almost every businessman’s greatest dream—going public.

His latest deal is worth $100 million, involving a publicly listed company named SRM Entertainment, through a reverse merger, allowing TRON to successfully backdoor into NASDAQ. At the age of 35, Sun Yuchen has become the head of a publicly listed company, and this 90s entrepreneur also holds seven or eight other notable enterprises and projects.

Sun Yuchen's blockchain landscape.

TRON: Sun Yuchen's first big gamble in the crypto world.

Sun Yuchen joined the Ripple China team in 2013, accumulating his first pot of gold during his tenure as an ambassador, and he established valuable connections within the blockchain circle. With these resources, he quickly conceived the idea of starting his own venture, intending to achieve great success in the blockchain field.

By 2017, Ethereum had already gained fame. Just past his 27th birthday, Sun Yuchen put aside the social app he was originally operating, reassembled a few classmates from Peking University, and with the support of capital tycoons behind him, he embarked on the entrepreneurial journey of creating the TRON+ public chain with ambitions of 'venturing back into the crypto world.'

Fortunately, the launch of the TRX token successfully raised about $400 million during the ICO. Unfortunately, the era of 'banning ICOs' came, and Chinese project parties and trading platforms fell silent, hurriedly fleeing, vowing that from their ancestors to generations to come, they would never engage in blockchain again.

During the most difficult days, Sun Yuchen refunded the ICO money, and the early core team of TRON nearly dispersed, with partners leaving due to security concerns. Sun Hand also admitted: 'My six years of entrepreneurship, the first three years were almost all wasted.'

The turning point came in April 2019 when Tether decided to issue a TRC-20 version of USDT on the TRON network. From then on, TRON firmly locked its development focus on the promotion and popularization of USDT, a move that almost laid the foundation for 99% of TRON's current market cap. 'Soon, USDT issued on the TRON blockchain will become the largest stablecoin in the world.' Years later, Sun Yuchen's words came true. A considerable amount of USDT on-chain transfers globally rely on TRON for operation.

Recent on-chain data shows that USDT's transaction volume and gas consumption on the TRON network now account for over 98% of the total on-chain volume. In other words, the on-chain activity of TRON is almost entirely sustained by USDT's 'blood transfusion.' For each USDT transaction, users typically pay a fee ranging from $0.3 to $8. According to current statistics, the TRON network's daily on-chain revenue has exceeded $2.1 million, with an annualized revenue of $770 million, most of which comes from the high-frequency transaction fees of USDT. The daily transaction count exceeds 2.46 million, with an average transaction fee of about $0.85, which is basically consistent with the actual transaction cost of USDT.

As of now, TRON's total market cap has reached $26.96 billion, surpassing Mixue Bingcheng, firmly ranking among the mainstream public chains globally, and also firmly occupying the core position in the circulation of stablecoins on-chain.

BitTorrent's 'sentimental acquisition.'

In the summer of 2018, compared to creating TRON, Sun Yuchen did something that seemed more 'out of the box' at the time—he bought the already 'past its prime' download tool BitTorrent for $140 million.

BitTorrent, a name that may not be unfamiliar to many born in the 80s and 90s: it was born in 2001 and is the first large-scale application of the P2P file sharing protocol. At its peak, about 40% of global internet traffic was transmitted via the BitTorrent protocol. In the era before centralized internet dominated, BitTorrent almost represented all the imagination of that generation regarding 'download freedom.'

However, for Sun Yuchen, this was not just a 'sentimental acquisition.' Acquiring the BitTorrent client was just the beginning; what he truly wanted to do was to blockchain the entire BitTorrent protocol—to give this old P2P network a 'rebirth.'

Shortly after the acquisition was finalized, Sun Yuchen launched the BTT token, adopting the TRC-10 standard, and simultaneously launched the 'BitTorrent Speed' project. Users can pay BTT for faster download speeds while uploaders can earn BTT rewards by seeding.

This idea looks good, but its implementation isn't so easy.

As of now, the total circulation of BTT is 986 trillion pieces, priced at about $0.00000068, with a total market cap of approximately $670 million, and daily trading volume remains stable at around $10 million, with an annual trading volume exceeding $2.6 billion. Although it is still about 78% below its historic peak (reached $0.00000304 in January 2022), such performance can still be considered decent in today's meme coin era.

Poloniex+ and HTX: Sun Yuchen's 'cash flow.'

For a long time, Sun Yuchen's second industry in the crypto world was trading platforms; he has two trading platforms in hand: Poloniex and HTX.

First, about Poloniex. This old trading platform was first acquired by the crypto startup Circle for $400 million in February 2018. At that time, Circle intended to make it a compliance pioneer but did not last long. In October 2019, Poloniex officially broke away from Circle with the support of an Asian investment consortium and Sun Yuchen, turning to deep cooperation with TRON, engaging in various directions such as TRC20-USDT stablecoin, DeFi, and TRON zones.

On June 9, 2022, Sun Yuchen took action again, teaming up with the Tron Federal Reserve and several well-known investment institutions to officially acquire Poloniex and directly name its Chinese brand 'TRON Trading Platform.' This acquisition was seen as filling the gap in the TRON ecosystem's 'lack of trading platforms,' marking the official entry of TRON into a new phase of 'public chain + trading platform' dual drive. As of now, the daily transaction volume on the Poloniex platform is about $500 million.

In October of the same year after acquiring Poloniex, Sun Yuchen turned his attention to another well-known trading platform—Huobi.

He first joined the Huobi Global Advisory Committee as a global advisor, announcing plans to promote Huobi's internationalization and upgrade the HT ecosystem. Soon, Huobi's executive team was gradually replaced. Ultimately, Sun Yuchen, through Hong Kong asset management company About Capital, acquired Huobi's equity for $1 billion, becoming the actual helm of the trading platform. As of now, Huobi still ranks among the top 10 trading platforms in the market, with a daily trading volume of $2.4 billion. Huobi's platform token HTX is currently priced at $0.29, with a market cap of $47 million.

Poloniex was first acquired by the crypto startup Circle for $400 million in February 2018. In October 2019, with the support of an Asian investment group and Sun Yuchen, the trading platform broke away from Circle and began deep cooperation with TRON, engaging in various fields including TRC20-USDT stablecoin, decentralized finance (DeFi), and TRON trading areas, thus allowing Poloniex to expand globally from North America.

On June 9, 2022, TRON founder Sun Yuchen announced the official acquisition of the well-known trading platform Poloniex in conjunction with the Tron Federal Reserve and several well-known investment institutions, and simultaneously activated the TRON Trading Platform as its Chinese community brand. With this acquisition, Poloniex will break the situation where the TRON public chain ecosystem lacks trading platforms, marking the official launch of TRON's 'public chain + trading platform' dual-drive strategy.

In October 2022, Sun Yuchen joined the Huobi Global Advisory Committee, announcing plans to expand Huobi's global strategy for international brand promotion, focusing on the operation of Huobi Token business and significantly empowering HT. Subsequently, Huobi executives began to leave one after another, and Sun Yuchen, through Hong Kong asset management company About Capital (Baiyu Capital), acquired Huobi's equity for $1 billion, becoming the actual controller of Huobi.

As of now, Huobi still occupies a position among the top 10 trading platforms in the market, with a daily trading volume reaching $2.4 billion.

USDD*, TUSD* and WBTC.

In addition to public chains, trading platforms, stablecoins, and wrapped Bitcoins, these are also indispensable parts of Sun Yuchen's commercial layout in the crypto world.

USDD, TUSD, and WBTC—these three tokens that are highly associated with Sun Yuchen are his three trump cards in the stablecoin and cross-chain asset landscape.

First, let’s talk about USDD. USDD is a decentralized stablecoin personally led by Sun Yuchen, issued and managed by the Tron DAO Reserve, with an operational mechanism designed entirely by him. To ensure USDD maintains its peg to the US dollar, Sun Yuchen directly controls the most critical assets in the collateral pool—large reserves of TRX, USDT, Bitcoin, etc. Whenever market fluctuations threaten its peg, he has repeatedly injected capital and reserves to stabilize it, making him the 'behind-the-scenes controller' of USDD. According to the latest data, the on-chain market cap of USDD is approximately $432 million, placing it around the 10th in stablecoin market cap rankings.

Now about TUSD. Although TUSD is not technically an asset under Sun Yuchen's name, various on-chain evidence and fund flows have basically solidified his shadow holding position. Since 2023, TUSD has become an important support currency for liquidity on TRON and HTX (formerly Huobi). However, this piece is not without risk: TUSD has faced several controversies regarding custody and auditing, and has also been targeted by the SEC for lawsuits. In 2024, Binance delisted its main trading pair, and by 2025, due to the implementation of MiCA regulations, it was completely delisted in the EU, retaining only withdrawal channels. To rescue the situation, Sun Yuchen had to dig into his own pockets, investing over $400 million at the beginning of 2025 to stabilize TUSD, further tying this stablecoin firmly to his name. Currently, TUSD's market cap is $492.6 million.

Finally, there's WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin), an ERC20 token issued on the Ethereum network, proposed in 2017 and officially released its white paper in 2019. Its value is pegged to Bitcoin on a one-to-one basis; each WBTC has an equivalent Bitcoin as reserve, managed through custodians (currently Bitgo), ensuring that WBTC holders can redeem it for Bitcoin at any time.

Although WBTC is not a project he directly controls, this heavyweight role in the TRON stablecoin architecture has already been viewed by some foreign media as Bitcoin wrapped under Sun Yuchen's direct control. Related reading: (Why did the market react so strongly to Justin Sun joining WBTC?)

The Tron DAO Reserve holds a massive amount of Bitcoin for a long time, and to facilitate on-chain collateralization, the team converts some BTC to WBTC for supporting the stable operation of USDD. It can be said that without WBTC, there would be no safety buffer for USDD on TRON today. According to the latest data from CoinMarketCap, the market cap of WBTC has reached $13.784 billion, making it one of the largest Bitcoin mapping assets in the world.

DLive*: Does Sun Yuchen also have a live streaming platform?

Compared to the previous few projects, DLive may be somewhat obscure.

Initially, DLive was actually a decentralized live streaming platform built on the Lino chain, and after being acquired by BitTorrent at the end of 2019, the entire team and technology stack also migrated into the TRON ecosystem.

Behind this integration is another foreshadowing laid by Sun Yuchen on the 'content platform + blockchain' route. DLive introduced BTFS (BitTorrent File System) for decentralized storage, and the BTT token is used for tipping and content distribution incentives, forming a closed loop running on-chain from creation, storage to tipping and profit-sharing. Meanwhile, DLive shares user account systems with BitTorrent, uTorrent, steemit, etc., allowing BTT to gradually become the 'universal point' in this content ecosystem.

Because of this, DLive once attracted overseas top streamers like PewDiePie to join, and the platform's monthly active users continued to grow, making it one of the most traffic-rich content windows in the TRON ecosystem. However, the lenient community management also laid hidden dangers.

Overseas top streamer PewDiePie was live streaming on DLive at that time.

At the beginning of 2021, DLive faced concentrated criticism from public opinion and regulatory bodies due to users live streaming the U.S. Capitol riot, leading to doubts about its content review and risk control mechanisms.

The collection arsenal APENFT Marketplace.

When it comes to Sun Yuchen's identity, aside from being a businessman, perhaps the most famous is that of a passionate art collector. He holds a long list of world-class artworks: original pieces by Picasso, Andy Warhol, Giacometti, and Basquiat are all in his collection. Recently, he made headlines by purchasing an artwork of 'a banana' for $6.2 million, placing him at the top of trending topics.

As a top art collector, it is not unusual for Sun Yuchen to have an NFT trading platform.

On March 29, 2021, Sun Yuchen officially registered the APENFT Foundation in Singapore, hoping to bridge traditional art and the world of NFTs through this platform. The core mission of APENFT is straightforward: to purchase top traditional artworks and NFT pieces as underlying assets while incubating young NFT artists, paving the way for them; at the same time, it will sponsor galleries, hold exhibitions, set up awards, support art criticism and research, and provide a new on-chain path for the global art community.

To ensure more security for on-chain art, APENFT has chosen Ethereum and TRON as its dual underlying technologies, using Ethereum to support smart contracts and global recognition while using TRON to meet high throughput and low gas requirements. Another early industry of Sun Yuchen, BTFS (BitTorrent File System), has also been integrated to provide decentralized storage, ensuring that art files are always accessible, immutable, and not lost due to single point failures.

Starting in 2021, the APENFT Marketplace officially launched as an NFT trading market based on TRON, specifically responsible for digitizing these top artworks, splitting them into NFTs, and allowing global users to hold 'fragmented ownership.' In 2022, Sun Yuchen again invested tens of millions of dollars to acquire pieces like the 'Digital Zodiac Beast Heads,' 'Nose,' and 'Naked Woman with Necklace,' directly donating them to the APENFT Foundation to further enhance its position in the digital art field.

With the traffic from the TRON community, Sun Yuchen's personal buzz, and the TRON network's on-chain fees as low as less than $1, the APENFT Marketplace quickly attracted a large number of creators and players who came seeking fame. Sun Yuchen also announced that 100% of the fees collected by the trading platform would be used for repurchasing and burning platform tokens, in addition to various speed races, hackathons, and other activities, almost bringing a lively atmosphere to the NFT field.

Currently, the market cap of the APENFT Marketplace token $NFT is $420 million.

From TRON to BitTorrent, from Poloniex to HTX, and to stablecoin 'cash pools' like USDD, TUSD, and WBTC that can leverage on-chain liquidity at any time, plus the APENFT Marketplace, this 'on-chain art museum.'

In less than ten years, Sun Yuchen has molded his business landscape in the crypto world into a complete body spanning public chains, trading platforms, stablecoins, NFTs, cross-chain, and international politics.

Behind this seemingly decentralized yet actually tightly interconnected network, according to data from Rhythm BlockBeats, the core assets in Sun Yuchen's hands have surpassed $43 billion in market value.

Now, with a $100 million purchase of SRM Entertainment, Sun Yuchen has successfully backdoored TRON onto the NASDAQ stage, and his greatest confidence may come from the increasingly warm relationship with the Trump family.

Sun Yuchen's grievances and entanglements with the United States.

Sun Yuchen's ties with America can be traced back to his days studying at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2011, he studied for a master's in East Asian studies but filled his electives with investment studies, entrepreneurial management, and venture capital courses at Wharton Business School, and in his spare time, he co-founded (Three People in America) with classmates, turning the life of international students into a video program that became popular on Youku, Bilibili, and YouTube, even discussed by CCTV.

It was also around that time that Sun Yuchen encountered the concept of Bitcoin through Reddit and campus tech communities. Compared to today's price of around $100,000, Bitcoin was quite 'cheap' back then, at about $10; he started with small investments and gradually increased his stakes.

At the end of 2013, Sun Yuchen gave up the opportunity for further studies at law school and joined Ripple Labs, becoming one of the first evangelists for the Ripple protocol in China. In 2014, he returned to China and received IDG investment, founding RuiBo TianXia Technology. Although he experienced the ICO ban, team fragmentation, fleeing overseas, and ridicule as 'Jia Yueting,' he managed to hold on.

But in the eyes of the Biden administration, Sun Yuchen has always been a 'troublemaker' on the blockchain.

Around 2020, as TRON was heavily used for illicit fund flows, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice launched investigations against him. According to the Wall Street Journal, he had not dared to set foot in the United States for years as a result.

In 2023, the US SEC officially filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of manipulating the prices of TRX and BTT and illegally selling unregistered securities. Even the celebrities who had been shouting for him—Akon, Ne-Yo, Soulja Boy, Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul—were named and fined.

To protect his freedom, he had to find 'amulets' everywhere, first taking on the title of WTO ambassador from the Caribbean nation of Grenada in 2021, gaining valuable diplomatic immunity. However, it wasn't long before Grenada's regime change in June 2022 gradually marginalized Sun Yuchen's diplomatic identity.

To continue receiving immunity, Sun Yuchen, who lost his Grenadian identity, was appointed as 'Speaker' and 'Prime Minister' in Liberland. This is a self-proclaimed liberal microstate, claiming sovereignty over a small area on the Danube floodplain at the border of Serbia and Croatia.

Sun Yuchen is well aware that in the power changes of America, nothing is permanently a loss, and nothing cannot be turned over. The 2024 election might just be his best chance for a comeback.

Long before the Wall Street financial giants began to explore cryptocurrencies and American politicians were arguing over crypto regulations, Sun Yuchen had quietly set the stage. 'I believed early on that President Trump would bring many positive influences to the cryptocurrency field. After he was elected, the entire crypto world was revitalized,' he once told the media.

The Trump family has made a high-profile bet on the cryptocurrency industry and personally participated in the World Liberty Financial project. From the end of last year to this year, Sun Yuchen successively invested a total of $75 million, becoming the 'top brother,' and was appointed as the core advisor for the project by the Trump family.

Sun Yuchen's HTX also became the first exchange to list WLF| the new stablecoin USD1. After clearing the way with advisors, funds, and venues, he even bought the most Trump Coins ($Trump) in the venue, holding 1.43 million coins worth about $23 million.

Not long after, the Trump official announced that they would invite the top 220 holders of $Trump to dinner. Sun Yuchen immediately tweeted that he was the largest holder. It is said that Trump only attended the dinner for half an hour, and the second half was practically Sun Yuchen's personal show, leading many netizens to jokingly call it the 'Sun Hand Dinner.'

Sun Yuchen was awarded a gold watch as the largest holder of Trump Coins at the Trump dinner.

'I am the bridge of communication between the cryptocurrency industry and the president, and in some ways, I may also be a bridge for future Sino-American communication,' he said in an interview. 'My original intention is to establish good relationships with the Trump family and bring more people from the traditional world into the blockchain world. We will work long-term and continuously with President Trump’s cryptocurrency projects to promote the development and progress of our entire industry.'

Left: Sun Yuchen; Right: Donald Trump, the eldest son of Trump.

For an entrepreneur, besides the numbers in their account, what they care about most is freedom. Compared to CZ, who paid a sky-high fine of $4.4 billion for freedom to enter and exit the United States, Sun Yuchen's price was minimal.

Thus, Sun Yuchen appeared quite happy about returning to the U.S., not only visiting multiple places and companies but also tweeting multiple times to express his 'affection' for Trump.


From being a 'suspect' chased by the FBI and SEC to now flaunting a gold watch gifted by the President in the White House, Sun Yuchen has mingled in this grand feast of the crypto political arena using his most adept methods, and the story seems to have reached a climax.

But the money-obsessed Sun Yuchen is likely not planning to stop here.

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