The man behind the 43 billion dollar empire: Sun Yuchen's obsession with 'making money'.

—— From the Jia Yueting of the crypto circle to a crypto version of Trump’s advisor, how did he do it?

‘I measure a person's success by how much money they have made.’

This was a statement made by Sun Yuchen eight years ago when he returned to China to start his business.

Now he is 35 years old, holding multiple publicly listed assets in the US and Hong Kong, controlling several trading platforms, and is known as 'the richest man in the crypto circle.' The 'crypto business map' he has laid out behind him has turned into a huge and highly coordinated closed-loop empire.

Chapter 1: TRON, supported by USDT, holds up half of the territory.

Sun Yuchen truly stepped into the crypto world when he founded TRON in 2017. He initially raised 400 million dollars through an ICO but was almost completely wiped out during the '94 ban' crisis. But who would have thought that the turning point came in 2019 when Tether announced it would issue USDT (TRC-20) on the TRON network.

Now, nearly half of the global USDT is circulating on TRON, collecting transaction fees of up to 2.1 million dollars daily, which almost supports the entire activity and value of the TRON chain.

Chapter 2: BitTorrent, the ambition behind the 'emotional acquisition'.

In 2018, Sun Yuchen spent 140 million dollars to acquire the globally popular P2P tool BitTorrent.

He is not aiming for retro but wants to blockchain it, promoting the new coin BTT and building a storage system BTFS, aiming to establish a decentralized content distribution network. Although he has not fully realized his ambition, the story of BitTorrent + TRON has successfully upgraded him from a 'project party' to a 'system-level infrastructure player.'

Chapter 3: HTX and Poloniex, the exchanges are the cash flow.

Sun Yuchen's truly 'loss-proof' weapon is the exchange.

He acquired Poloniex at a low price and then invested 1 billion dollars through About Capital to control Huobi (HTX), fully taking over trading matching, currency issuance, and listing rules. HTX and Poloniex have a total daily trading volume close to 3 billion dollars, providing stable cash flow for the entire TRON ecosystem.

Chapter 4: USDD, TUSD, WBTC, controlling the entry points of on-chain dollars and Bitcoin.

The USDD stablecoin launched by Sun Yuchen is backed by a large amount of USDT and BTC reserves from him and TRON DAO; although he does not openly hold TUSD, the on-chain capital flow almost confirms his deep control; WBTC is even more of an invisible weapon he uses for on-chain cross-asset conversion.

Three major currencies have built a 'on-chain dollar + Bitcoin reserve system.'

Chapter 5: DLive and the dream of on-chain live streaming.

That's right, Sun Yuchen has also worked on a live streaming platform.

As part of the BitTorrent system, DLive once invited PewDiePie to join, and the entire platform's reward and profit-sharing mechanism ran on-chain, making it the most prominent content window for TRON.

However, with the outbreak of the 'Capitol Hill live streaming incident,' DLive began to lose momentum, and the TRON content ecosystem temporarily went quiet.

Chapter 6: APENFT, Sun Yuchen's 'digital art collection'.

Sun Yuchen is also one of the earliest major investors in the NFT circle.


He spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire top works from Picasso, Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and others, packaging them all into APENFT, and then splitting them into NFT fragments for global users to buy. Combining the low-fee TRON network with BTFS storage, he launched a combination of 'art + chain + split issuance.'

Currently, the market value of the $NFT platform coin has reached 420 million dollars.

Chapter 7: Sun Yuchen's game of clearing customs in the US.

In 2013, he studied in the United States and was introduced to Bitcoin;

After 2019, he was targeted by the FBI and SEC due to the flow of funds in the dark web related to the TRON network, making it impossible for him to enter the US for several years;

In 2023, he was sued by the SEC for manipulating cryptocurrency prices;

Starting in 2024, he frequently interacted with the Trump family, becoming an advisor to the stablecoin project WLFI and even the largest holder of the 'Trump coin';

In early 2025, he finally 'returned to the US,' wearing the gold watch gifted by Trump, attending a dinner at the White House, making headlines everywhere.

Today: Sun Yuchen's crypto empire, valued at over 43 billion dollars, is quietly completing its listing.

By spending 100 million dollars to reverse acquire SRM Entertainment, TRON successfully went public on NASDAQ.

From the 'Jia Yueting of the crypto circle' to the chairman of NASDAQ; from being chased by the FBI to sitting at the dining table of the US president, Sun Yuchen has spent ten years writing a textbook on 'how to build a crypto empire based on rules.'