At a time when the world is divided between Russia and Ukraine, it looks like Justin Sun wants to sail on two boats. The China-born diplomat and the founder of the popular blockchain Tron, has recently displayed some strange behavior, leading to a question – whose side is he on?
When Russia began its full-scale war against Ukraine, Sun was one of the few crypto giants who offered help in supporting Ukraine via crypto fundraising. Tron community members raised a total of $1.46 million USDT during the campaign, which included a $200K donation from Sun himself in support of the Ukrainian people.
All was going well until the Ukrainian government canceled the airdrop token plan, which upset Sun immensely. He took to Twitter, saying: “TRON community has donated over $1.2M in USDT (TRC20), but now the airdrop just ignores them completely. It is just UNFAIR. We need to fix it!”
On the list of patently unfair things we could come up with, not getting a reward for donating to a charitable cause is probably one of the least unfair things we can imagine. Sorry for the editorialization, we’re just being real.
And our take isn’t mutually exclusive from the rhetoric in the broader crypto community, which was perplexed with how the Tron creator responded to the airdrop cancellation. Though Sun insisted that he was standing up for the entire Tron community, his comments alienated a critical mass of people.
But the Sun’s strange behavior did not end there. The Chinese billionaire was apparently playing both sides of the ball. On his Chinese Twitter account, Sun tweeted about a video call he had with the Russian representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO). He expressed the hope of growing collaboration with the country, saying: “In a video call with Russia’s (WTO) Ambassador Dmitry Lyakishev, we discussed how technology could be used for humanitarian cases for Russia’s development, such as the use of Blockchain tech to help citizens that don’t have access to the financial system. Hope to strengthen future cooperation with Russia!”
The double-speak aroused even greater suspicion from the ecosystem. However, given that Sun stepped down from working on Tron and now serves as a WTO diplomat for the country of Grenada, these kinds of conversations might be slightly more excusable. However, Sun’s perplexing double-speak might also have something to do with the Chinese government’s refusal to explicitly condemn the invasion of Ukraine.
Whatever the case is, Sun – one of crypto’s more controversial figures – might want to clarify his personal positions… since there is no gray area in war, and playing both sides could backfire.