Justin Sun Says Only These People Question Him

Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun now says that people who don’t understand that he is “a true blockchain believer” are those questioning him.

“I’m a true believer of blockchain. It’s once in a lifetime. It’s only people who don’t understand it who question me,” Sun told Bloomberg in an interview “from a luxury office suite overlooking Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour.”

The article goes on to point to a January report by the Binance-acquired analytics service DappReview, which called Tron “Las Vegas on the blockchain,” stemming from the observation that the blockchain platform today “revolves around the largely unregulated field of crypto gambling.”

Sun “identified niche customer bases, namely, gamers and gamblers, that have great reasons to use blockchain, drive a lot of transactions, and are crypto savvy,” Matthew Graham, CEO of the China-based advisory company Sino Global Capital is quoted as saying.

As reported, DappReview’s Q1 market report found that over 99% of the USD 7.9 billion total transaction volume was the work of Ethereum, Tron, and EOS, but that only Ethereum saw a year-over-year (YoY) growth. The total transaction volume of Tron dapps during 2020 Q1 was USD 415 million, down 74%.

Furthermore, DappRadar, a dapp data aggregator and analysis firm, compared January 2019 to January 2020 and found that Tron wins in the daily active users category, but that an increase is seen only in the gambling category. The network stuck with gambling and high risks dapps, so it’s failing to expand outside this area.

Meanwhile, since the beginning of this year, Justin Sun found himself in hot waters again: first for the ongoing Steem saga that led to a blockchain split, and then for the reports that Tron received more than USD 2 million from the US pandemic relief fund. The latter was allegedly actively promoted in China, but not disclosed elsewhere.

This is far from the first time Sun was criticized by the Cryptoverse, whether it’s for suspected foul play or his overhyping tendency. In February, Sun finally had the long-expected dinner with crypto-skeptic billionaire Warren Buffett, which he had won in a charity auction for USD 4.6 million in July 2019, and which itself was met with a cancellation, a deleted apology, and a lot of criticism.

And just recently, Sun said he “will personally 100% sponsor anyone who was harmed by the DAO incident” and is seeking damages from Vitalik Buterin, Co-founder of the competing and more popular blockchain platform, Ethereum.

“His playbook might be the optimal strategy during the early barbaric growth period of the crypto industry,” Wayne Zhao, analyst and managing partner of researcher TokenInsight is quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “You are nothing without people’s attention, no matter if it’s good or bad.”

Recently, Sun and his team announced a network upgrade to Tron 4.0. TRX is currently (8:05 UTC) trading at USD 0.015. It’s up by almost 4% in a day and 5% in a week.