Recently, I’ve been looking into the business blueprint of this fellow, Justin Sun, and I have to say—he really is bold in what he does. From founding the PiMe App in 2014, to this year using $100 million to take Tron through a backdoor listing into NASDAQ, once you walk through the entire process, you’ll realize he isn’t just doing projects—he’s building a full ecosystem empire.

Let’s start with Tron. In 2017, Justin Sun re-entered the crypto space and launched the TRON public chain. At the time, its ICO raised about $400 million. Although it was later hit by the 9.4 ban and the team scattered, the turning point came in 2019—Tether decided to issue the TRC-20 version of USDT on Tron. This move directly rewrote Tron’s fate. Now, on the Tron network, USDT transfer volume accounts for more than 98% of the total on-chain value on public chains. Daily on-chain revenue exceeds $2.1 million, and annualized revenue reaches $770 million. Tron’s total market value has now reached the level of more than $30 billion, firmly ranking among the top mainstream public chains worldwide.

As for exchanges, Justin Sun holds two major platforms: Poloniex and HTX. In June 2022, he officially acquired Poloniex, and then in October he also acquired a stake in Huobi for $1 billion through About Capital, becoming the de facto controller of this long-established exchange. HTX is still steadily positioned within the world’s top 10 exchanges, with daily trading volume of $2.4 billion.

In the stablecoin sector, Justin Sun has laid out USDD, TUSD, and WBTC. USDD is a decentralized stablecoin he personally designed, and its market cap is now $151 million. Although TUSD is not, on the surface, his asset, on-chain evidence basically confirms his controlling position; he even personally poured more than $400 million into stabilizing it in early 2025. Its current market cap is about $494 million. As the largest Bitcoin-mapped asset, WBTC has a market cap as high as $8.74 billion, becoming an important role supporting the Tron ecosystem.

Interestingly, Justin Sun also acquired BitTorrent, this “outdated” download tool, investing $140 million. He launched the BTT token and the BitTorrent Speed project, trying to blockchain-ize the entire P2P protocol ecosystem. Although BTT’s performance is now fairly in line with expectations, it reflects his ambition for the content ecosystem.

In the NFT space, he founded the APENFT Foundation and Marketplace, serving as a showcase for his own art-collection fanaticism. The platform token NFT market value of APENFT Marketplace has reached $324 million. There’s also the DLive live-streaming platform—although it was once criticized for content review issues, it still remains one of the most trafficked content windows within the Tron ecosystem.

To be honest, in less than ten years, Justin Sun has transformed his business blueprint in crypto into a complete system spanning public chains, trading platforms, stablecoins, NFTs, and cross-chain solutions. According to statistics, the core assets he holds are already worth more than $43 billion.

What’s interesting is that this time he was able to successfully pull off the backdoor listing and go public, and behind it there is support from the Trump family. From late last year to this year, Justin Sun poured $75 million into the World Liberty Financial project, becoming its largest investor, and was therefore appointed as a core advisor for the project. He even bought 1.43 million Trump coins, making him the largest holder in the room. At a dinner hosted by Trump, he became the center of attention.

This guy’s story is actually well worth paying attention to—from being investigated by the FBI in the United States and not daring to enter the country for years, to now being deeply tied to the Trump family and successfully achieving a go-public listing—this transformation alone says a lot. No matter how you look at it, Justin Sun is a pro at “playing by the rules.”