Everyone Is Turning on This Crypto Billionaire I China Insights

Friends, the situation between Justin Sun and Jing Tian has completely changed in nature. Following the public takedowns by his two ex-girlfriends, a new wave of heavy-hitting figures has entered the scene today, all of whom are insiders who have dealt with Justin Sun in the past. A former Tron executive has made public revelations, and the author who once wrote a business biography for Brother Sun has also stepped forward. A true veteran of the crypto world, dubbed by netizens as Brother Sun's original godfather, has been dug up. Ren Ren founder Wang Huiwen and Sogu founder Wang Xiaochuan have joined in one after another to twist the knife. These people might not know Jing Tian well, but they certainly know Brother Sun all too well. Some are saying that the forces behind Jing Tian have started to exert their influence. This super drama, spanning the entertainment industry, the crypto world, overseas surrogacy, and top-tier billionaires, is evolving into a unique asymmetric siege. Some say Brother Sun is about to have his reputation ruined, while others are betting that he's going to get into trouble. In today's 20 Minutes, we'll continue to give you a comprehensive rundown of the latest news on this incident all at once. For those watching Zhen Guan Den for the first time, don't miss out. Like, subscribe, and stick around for the tea. Our main focus here is to give you a full rundown of trending events in just 20 minutes. If you value your time and want the most comprehensive and hard-hitting truth behind these events, following me is definitely worth it. Today, let's start with the most black-humored piece of news. Do you guys remember the opening of Brother Sun's little essay? In 2007, he found Jing Tian on Xiaonei and sent a friend request. He spent 40 minutes writing and deleting his message, and in the end, he only sent two words, hello. At the time, many people were moved by Brother Sun's devotion. But today, the founder of Xiaonei, who later became the co-founder of Meituan, Wang Huiwen, came out and spoke up. He said that the design and implementation of the star user feature on Xiaonei back then were very crude. As long as a user's profile picture and name looked real, and the reviewers didn't recognize it as a fake photo of a celebrity, well, they would just grant them star user status. The implication is that the Jing Tian who had Brother Sun so lovesick and desperate on Xiaonei back then might have been a fake. Wang Huiwen later added that if it was a fake, then Brother Sun's years of devotion were truly pitiful. If he had known that the Jing Tian on Xiaonei was fake, perhaps none of what followed would have happened. So, a 6,000-word heartfelt narrative, a 19-year obsession, and a $30 million lawsuit all started, of all things, with an accidental friend request. If Wang Huiwen's comment was just laughable, the next two carry a completely different way. In the crypto world, Changpeng Zhao didn't just post about it, he has now gone ahead and unfollowed Brother Sun. Brother Sun even went into their comments section trying to say a few words, but the other party completely ignored him. Following that, Wang Xiaochuan, the founder of Sogu and Baichuan AI, jumped in, saying that a liar is just untrustworthy, but someone who is heartless and ungrateful is a real villain. Why is Wang Xiaochuan being so harsh right off the bat? Do the two of them have some kind of grudge? Well, this goes back 12 years. In 2014, the two of them recorded a talk show together. At that time, Justin Sun had just left Ripple and returned to China to start a company called Ripple Tech, secured investment from IDG, and had a whole bunch of titles. For those friends who missed Justin Sun's early experiences, you can check out my episode on that. At the time, we covered his entire background and also identified his key personality traits. Getting back to the point, back then, Brother Sun had a ton of titles, Peking University grad, UPenn grad, cover person for Asia Weekly, and a disciple of Jack Ma. However, when the media at the time asked industry insiders how they evaluated his Ripple project, the answer they got was that his marketing was top-notch, but there was no actual product. And who was Wang Xiaochuan at that time? A graduate of Chengdu No. 7 High School, an international Olympiad and informatics gold medalist, a Tsinghua graduate, and a tech-focused leader who built Sogo into a publicly traded company, line of code by line of code. One is a person who takes narrative to the extreme, and the other is a person who takes product to the extreme. With these two sitting together to record a show, it would be a miracle if they could actually finish it. The result was, according to Justin Sun's own account, Wang Xiaochuan called him a skimmer right there on the spot, said he was bound to fail, and that recording a show with him was a disgrace. In the end, they couldn't continue the recording and he walked out. Who dug up this old story? It was Brother Sun himself. On February 3rd, 2019, he posted a photo on his WeChat moments with the caption, I will never forget the look he gave me, the look of sizing up a scammer. He even added, less than three years later, my company's market value surpassed Sogu's. The people in life who look down on you provide the most unforgettable motivation. In June of the same year, Brother Sun won the charity launch with Warren Buffett, and this WeChat moments post was dug up. Wang Xiaochuan replied on Weibo at the time saying, beautiful. He asked, what is success and what is a scammer? Everyone has their own definition. Some think it's net worth, others think it's market value. When placed in the long river of history, it's all just a passing breeze. Brother Sun immediately issued a challenge, a three-year bet to see whose market value would be higher in June 2022, Tron or Sobu. I bet 100 bitcoins. Later in an interview, he added, Wang Xiaochuan and I are not comparable because I'm an entrepreneur, while Wang Xiaochuan is essentially just an employee. You see, 12 years have passed, and the words Wang Xiaochuan uses now are no longer liar like they were back then. He has upgraded from untrustworthy to heartless and unrighteous. Today, a former Tron executive has also come out with revelations, commenting that when Brother Sun is making money, he doesn't care who the other party is, saying that his bottom line is very low and some of his operations are embarrassing even to his own people. This assessment sounds quite abstract, doesn't it? If you want to know exactly what kind of situation this is, well, there's a story in the crypto circle that has been circulating for nine years, and it's been dug up again these past couple of days. In December 2023, 36kron published an in-depth report titled Justin Sun, the blockchain patient. Inside, it recounts a story that took place in the winter of 2017 in a courtyard house on Beijing's East 2nd Ring Road, where there was a private kitchen not open to the public called Wo Ru Rou, if I were. The host that evening was a man named Xu Zijing, known in the industry as The Martian. This guy, back in the crypto circle of that time, held a much higher seniority than Justin Sun. He was among the very first batch of people to achieve financial freedom through mining. At that time, The Martian's coin, HSR, was also one of the hottest cryptocurrencies around. According to the description from the insider in the report, that night, Justin Sun and Xu Zijing talked all night about their ideals, about the future of HSR, and the future of Tron. Xu Zijing really admired this young man, feeling that he was a formidable talent, and praised him on the spot for his diligence and dedication. The two had a great conversation, and by the end, decided to swap coins. Let me explain this action for friends outside the industry. In 2017, swapping coins and endorsing each other was almost an industry standard. It meant taking my coins and swapping The meaning behind this went far beyond just an exchange of assets. It was more like a ritual of forming an alliance. If I hold your coins, it means I'm backing you. If you hold my coins, then you're on my boat. Neither of us would dump the other's coins. We're like sworn brothers who've pledged blood. After all, if you dump the other person's coins, the ones in your own hands go to zero, right? The thing that kept this whole system running wasn't contracts, but the unwritten rules of the game. That night, Xu Zijing swapped 140,000 HSR for 330 million of Brother Sun's Tron coins, completing the exchange right on the spot. The gathering lasted until two in the morning, when Justin Sun said, hey, I need to head back to the office. Xu Zijing personally walked him to the gate of the courtyard house, and while at the door, he even praised Brother Sun to the people around him. Then Justin Sun walked out, turned the corner, leaned against the wall, and right there at the entrance of the alley, he dumped all the HSR he had just swapped. Insiders say he made nearly 30 million RMB on this deal, and the price of HSR plummeted immediately. The next day, by the time Xu Zijing sobered up, a stampede-like crash had already broken out. According to those in the know, there was no save in this coin anymore. Later, 36kraw reached out to Xu Zijing himself for verification. He neither denied nor confirmed it, responding only with silence. This article also contains many descriptions of Brother Sun. For instance, many old acquaintances say that Brother Sun is an asshole. A former Tron employee said, Brother Sun? He's always cussing people out. In the brutal slaughterhouse of cryptocurrency, there's almost no sickle sharper than Brother Sun's, and so on and so forth. I've posted this article in My Little Shop. For those interested, you're welcome to go take a look. My Little Shop also has many good products that I've used myself and recommend to you, such as eye patches, skincare products, and so on. Friends, you are welcome to browse around. Additionally, today, a financial media outlet provided an extremely subtle clue. Friends, you must pay close attention to what follows, because if this clue holds true, it might just be the real ulterior motive behind that 6,000-word-long article from Brother Sun. On May 26th of this year, the UK government added HTX to its sanctions list against Russia, citing allegations of providing financial services to Russia's shadow financial network, a seven, to assist in evading Western sanctions, involving funds exceeding 1.5 billion US dollars. This is the first time the UK has applied measures typically used to sanction banks, such as cutting off payment channels to a cryptocurrency exchange. Immediately following this, on July 23rd, the European Union adopted its 21st round of sanctions against Russia, including HTX in the annex for the first time, determining that it significantly hinders the EU's sanction measures. This round listed a total of 218 individuals and entities, the largest batch in four years, and HTX was the largest entity on that list. The effective date for this ban is August 23rd of this year. On the same day, Binance issued an announcement prohibiting users from conducting any transactions with Huobi starting from August 23rd, citing compliance-related separation rather than industry competition as the reason. Four days later, on August 27th, Brother Sun's girlfriend Jing Tian posted. Is there some hidden meaning in this timeline? It sounds quite professional, but how can one discern Brother Sun's underlying intentions from this? To understand the message behind this, first, let's take a look at what these sanctions actually mean for HTX. HTX, formerly known as Huobi, was one of the earliest and largest cryptocurrency exchanges in China. In October 2022, it was sold by its original founder, Li Lin. The buyer was ostensibly an institution called About Capital, and Justin Sun himself has consistently and firmly denied being the owner, only acknowledging that he serves as a member of its global advisory board. However, from Bloomberg to almost every crypto analysis firm, it is widely accepted that Brother Sun is the true controller behind the scenes. You can think of a cryptocurrency exchange as an online bank without deposit insurance. When you transfer money in, a number appears on your screen. This number isn't your actual money, it's the amount the platform owes you. Whenever you click withdraw, they can give that money to you. So, for an exchange, those numbers in users' accounts are its liabilities, while the actual coins sitting in its own wallets are its assets. Under normal operations, no one is going to withdraw their money all at the same time. So even if the exchange's operations are a bit shaky, it can still keep running. But if everyone comes to withdraw their money at once, that's a bank run. And as we all know, for a bank run to happen, sometimes you don't even need the truth. Suspicion is enough. So recently, a financial blogger did something. They took the proof of reserves published by HTX itself and recalculated it based on the prices at the end of August. And what exactly were they calculating? Let's first explain what a proof of reserves is. It's essentially like a bank periodically releasing a photo of its vault, telling you, hey, here's how many coins I have, here's how many coins users have deposited, and here's the coverage ratio. Now, HTX has been doing this for the past few years, so this blogger took the reserve data they provided and recalculated it based on current The result revealed a shocking situation. The assets deposited by users, the liabilities, amount to approximately US$6.9 billion. Note that this liability is the platform's liability, but the hard assets the platform can actually account for, its coins, only amount to US$4.25 billion at current market value. This means there is a staggering US$2.6 billion hole in the middle. However, this is completely contrary to HTX's official claims. In July of this year, HTX disclosed that the reserve ratios for all virtual currencies on its platform were maintained at over 100%, insisting on a one-to-one reserve, and that user assets could be withdrawn at any time. Which one is true doesn't really matter. What matters is that at this critical juncture, just as sanctions have taken effect, the question of whether HTX actually has the money and whether there is a hole in its finances has been brought to the table. This in itself already constitutes a risk, because as we mentioned earlier, the pairs don't necessarily need the truth. Sometimes suspicion alone is enough. Now, speaking of this, many people's first reaction must be, isn't Justin Sun a billionaire? Didn't he just make it onto Forbes with a net worth of US$8.5 billion? Even if there really is a US$2.6 billion shortfall, couldn't he just sell some of his own to cover it? What is there to worry about? Well, this is precisely the most interesting part of the whole situation, and also the biggest motivation for Brother Sun to make this move. The largest chunk of Brother Sun's US$8.5 billion net worth is his 60-plus billion TRX, or Tron coins. Their nominal value is US$20 billion, but he can't actually touch that money. How so? It's like you opened a casino and all the chips in the casino are printed by you. Your paper net worth is calculated based on the market price of that pile of chips. Now, your casino is short on cash, and you want to sell the chips in your hand to exchange them for cash to fill this hole. But once you start dumping a large amount onto the market, the price of the chips will inevitably crash and fall. Then your own net worth will be dragged down, and the more you sell, the lower it goes, creating a vicious cycle. What's even worse is that the assets in your casino's vault, which guarantee all your clients' holdings, are exactly these same chips. So you absolutely need the price of these chips to go up, not down. In this situation, the very act of trying to fill the hole will only make it even bigger. So when you put all these things together, with sanctions closing in step by step, a shortfall already appearing in the exchange, that shortfall shaking user confidence, and the fact that he can't sell off the chips in his own hands to put out the fire, what weapons does Brother Sun have left? There's only one thing left, attention. And it has to be the kind of attention that makes people have confidence in him. With that perspective in mind, let's take another look at that little essay he wrote, My Girlfriend Jing Tian. You'll notice the startling detail. From beginning to end, the article is just showing off wealth, demonstrating Brother Sun's invincible liquidity. This includes chartering an Airbus A330 for 30 people, clearing out an entire island, a 26-person service team in the Maldives, booking an entire floor at a hotel in California, dropping over a million dollars in a single month, a $30 million dowry, and that line in response to a $50 million offer, it won't have any impact on me. Looking at the objective results, it certainly achieved them. From August 27th onwards, the entire Chinese internet was discussing nail filing, calling for mommy, tattoos, and chaotic affairs. No one mentioned those two imperial edicts from four days prior anymore. As we've discussed before, what Brother Sun has been best at over these years is using a new headline to cover up an old one. From the Buffett lunge to that banana, from the space ticket to this long article, the playbook has been consistent throughout. In this episode, we reviewed his early experiences, and this person is very good at leveraging attention. For him, attention is an asset. Turn attention into capital, then turn capital into chips, and then turn chips into assets. How does he do it? For those who missed it, you are welcome to watch that episode. Now, as more and more explosive details are coming out, you'll notice a strange phenomenon, which we also discussed in yesterday's episode. The entire public opinion has flipped, and it's a very thorough flip at that. The public opinion environment for Jing Tian is becoming increasingly favorable, and now there are even quite a few netizens starting to discuss whether the forces behind Jing Tian have started to exert their influence. What can be confirmed is that it's no longer just self-media and casual observers getting involved. The real heavy hitters, the state-run media and mainstream official outlets are already weaving a dragnet. On August 28, China Blue News, under Zhejiang Radio and Television Group, posted about why Justin Sun won't return to the mainland, directly linking this incident to his historical controversies involving border control, illegal fundraising, and money laundering. Subsequently, they posted about why virtual currency is banned, steering the topic toward the framework of financial regulation, gambling, fraud, and money laundering. Subsequently, Jimu News, under Hubei Daily, Liqi News, under Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation, and Cover News, under Sichuan Daily, also joined in one after another, launching what could be called an all-out siege on Brother Sun, covering everything from privacy rights and personality infringement to legal liability and public ethics. Southern Metropolis Daily also published a commentary that appeared restrained on the surface but was actually full of murderous intent, titled Let Gossip Be Gossip and Let the Law Be the Law. The most critical turning point occurred on the afternoon of August 28. The People's Daily online opinion channel published an article with the headline Hot Searches Dominated, How Can Platforms Prioritize Traffic Above All Else? This article, throughout its entirety, did not name Sun Yuchen or Jing Tian, but it made its point very clear. Over the past two days, an incident involving a private dispute has continued to ferment online, dominating major hot search lists within just a few hours. Among the top 10 entries on a certain hot search list, more than half were related to this matter, and even some private and trivial life details were dug up one by one. Then the article cited legal regulations, noting that Article 7 of the Provisions on the Governance of the Online Information Content Ecosystem explicitly lists the hyping of scandals, rumors, and misconduct, as well as the promotion of vulgar, crude, or kitschy content as negative information that should be prevented and resisted. And this commentary was quickly picked up and reposted by Phoenix New Media, New Hunan, and various media outlets across provinces like Hubei and Zhejiang, forming a textbook propagation chain. It started with directives from central media, followed by provincial mainstream outlets reposting it, then commercial portals jumping on board, and finally it spread across social media platforms. So at this point, who would still dare to claim that this is just a simple, nasty public feud between a wealthy individual and the entertainment industry? This commentary from People's Daily Online is particularly worth savoring. On the surface, it is completely neutral. It calls for cooling things down and reducing the occupation of public discourse space by private disputes. It doesn't say who is right or wrong, but the effect of this cooling down is not symmetrical. Because at the time, Sun Yuchen's primary weapon in public opinion was the constant disclosure of private details regarding relationships, money, and childbirth. Jing Tian, on the other hand, chose to speak less and wait for the court to handle it. Therefore, when state media called on platforms to reduce private disputes and the sensationalization of privacy, it objectively dealt a greater blow to Sun Yuchen's ability to continue launching public opinion offensives. But interestingly, after the cooling down of private relationship details, the negative discussions surrounding Sun Yuchen in China's public opinion sphere did not disappear. Instead, they shifted toward directions with greater public legitimacy. For example, his old news regarding exit bans, illegal fundraising, cryptocurrency regulation, privacy infringement, character issues, and hype in the crypto circle, among others. So these are the issues that were specifically allowed in the article, involving legal infringement and the like. Therefore, you will find that this public opinion event is presenting a very unique and interesting structure. Private gossip is being asked to cool down, but negative issues regarding Sun Yuchen's legal, regulatory, business, and character aspects are still being allowed to continue and expand. This is why we now see so many people coming out, scrambling to beat the drums and expose Sun Yuchen's dirt. The impact of the attacks on both sides is clearly asymmetrical, and this is the truly unique aspect that deserves our continued attention. But does this mean that the forces behind Jing Tian are fighting back? It can't be directly linked, because there is no more direct evidence for this point yet, but it is indeed worth continuing to watch. Friends, do you think this public opinion structure, which is clearly asymmetrical in its results, is the work of the big shot behind Jing Tian? The forces behind Jing Tian are no simple matter. In this episode, we have detailed the person behind her, so for those friends who haven't watched that episode, I strongly suggest you head over and watch it now. By the way, before you leave, give me a like, and new friends, don't forget to subscribe to True Viewpoint. Here, we focus on explaining hot topics for you in 20 minutes, pure, solid information without any fluff. Sometimes, I also share fascinating news stories from here in the United States. If you enjoy this type of content, be sure to subscribe so that my new videos will frequently appear on your YouTube homepage in the future. Before you leave, I also would like to ask for a small favor. Please click that hype button, and also share my video with anyone you think might be interested. So, I, Zhenfei, would like to thank you all in advance, because every interaction you have helps my videos spread further and reach more people. Alright, wishing you all a great weekend, that's all for today. If you'd like to keep following this big story, let me know in the comments, and I'll arrange to cover it based on everyone's interest. Thanks for watching, everyone. See you next Tuesday. Join us right here on ZhenGuanDian, True Perspectives. Bye.