By
Bhushan Akolkar
June 27th, 2024
Justin Sun postponing charity lunch with Warren Buffett caused rumors that he was held in China based on charges of gambling and spreading pornography. Sun broadcasted a live video from San Francisco to disprove reports.
After, due to his kidney stones problems, TRON’s CEO Justin Sun had to cancel the charity lunch with Warren Buffett – some conspiracy theories came to the sight.
Some Chinese media said that he was arrested due to illegal fundraising and some said that he was forbidden to leave China. None of this was true since Sun posted a photo from – San Francisco yesterday.
Justin on live #TRON #BitTorrent https://t.co/Ul23PjpLF2
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) July 23, 2019
But let’s remind you about what happened. Yesterday, Sun had to postpone the charity lunch with billionaire (and crypto- skeptic) Warren Buffett saying he ended up being in the hospital due to kidney stones. He, however, didn’t precisely say what happened so a lot of his followers came to the conclusion that this is all a lie.
That also resulted in a huge TRX drop that hasn’t been stopping today as well. At the time of writing, TRX was down 9.18% to $0,023.
As Twitter community was pretty worried for Sun’s health, he seems to be getting better (and active on Twitter as always):
I feel so much better now! It seems I will be back to work with full speed on this Friday! 😄#TRON #TRX $TRX #BitTorrent #BTT $BTT
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) July 24, 2019
Bay bridge is beautiful. Me and our comms guy AKA bodyguard. #TRON pic.twitter.com/ujj2FEkN3K
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) July 23, 2019
No need to #FUD! $TRX & $BTT is #SAFU! 😆I am #SAFU master today😊@cz_binance
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) July 23, 2019
It would be too simple if everything could be solved out easily, so yesterday, after the news of postponing, a media outlet called the 21st Century Business Herald published an article accusing Sun of illegally raising funds for the crypto project.
It also said the Tron network operated illegal gambling services accessible to Chinese residents. Just for your information, gambling is illegal in China (they all go to Macau for that purposes) but it’s legal if you possess any other passport than Chinese. Herald also accused one of the Sun’s early startups, Peiwo, a social app, saying that it was illegally engaged in the pornography business.
They also claimed that Justin Sun was held inside mainland China and cannot go out saying:
“Without a clear answer to these questions raised, will Justin be able to have this $4 million meal?”
Of course, Sun immediately responded via his Weibo account and denied all the accusations saying:
“The illegal fundraise accusation is wrong. Tron complied with regulators and refunded investors on Sept. 20 in 2017, immediately after the order [of a ban on initial coin offerings] from seven ministries in China. The Tron foundation is based in Singapore in compliance with local regulations and laws … and does not involve any flow of capital, or any crypto or fiat currency onramp.”
He also said that Peiwo was based on the decentralized Wave protocol, which is open to all. He wrote:
“The Wave foundation acts as the initiator of the agreement and resolutely opposes the use of the Internet open-source agreement to engage in illegal activities. At the same time, it also calls on application developers to comply with the laws and regulations of various countries.”
However, after that, local Chinese media outlet Caixin reported that the Office of the Leading Group for the Special Campaign Against Internet Financial Risks called on security organs to launch an investigation into Sun. They said that Chinese law states that individuals under investigation can be prevented from leaving the country for one month to one year. The report states that, at the time of writing, they still didn’t know where Sun actually was.
Cliff Edwards, director of global communications at the Tron Foundation, called the Caixin story fake. He said:
“That report’s totally inaccurate, and we posted a photo, several photos today of Justin in San Francisco.”