Why Jack Ma’s protégé Justin Sun has 1.3 million Weibo followers – and other things to know about the tech millionaire
The Ivy League graduate and founder of blockchain currency platform, TRON, is a millennial millionaire who shot to international fame recently after winning a bid for lunch with the legendary Warren Buffett
Chinese multimillionaire Justin Sun Yuchen is probably best known for being the young entrepreneur who spent US$4.57 million bidding on a charity lunch with American investment guru Warren Buffett.
The Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, reportedly worth US$200 million, has made his fortune from a series of business ventures, most notably as founder of the decentralised blockchain-based currency platform TRON.
Yet to describe him as a “blockchain entrepreneur” is an over simplification.
From bottom of the class to Ivy League
Sun says he has a “complicated background” in his 2017 autobiography, Brave New World. His family is originally from Shandong, but he was born in Qinghai and grew up in Guangdong.
Like most millennials, Sun spent a lot of his childhood online, which eventually led to a poor school report.
However, during his second year of high school, he realised that getting into a top university was a condition for achieving his dreams and establishing himself in Beijing, a city he yearned to work in.
After cramming for the university entrance exams during his last year in high school, Sun was admitted to Peking University, one of the most prestigious universities in China. He spent three years there studying for a bachelor’s degree in history, before moving onto another leading educational institution, the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.
We will be the founders, builders and evangelists for a decentralised, autonomous ecosystem. It is time to return to that original intention, to continue on the path to creating an internet owned by the people, governed by the people and for the people