The Wolf Of All Streets - The Future of Crypto and Defi with Justin Sun, Founder and CEO of Tron

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Justin Sun is one of the most prominent members of the crypto community. His crypto story started in 2012, when Justin worked on some of the the earliest projects in the space before building Tron (TRX). Justin's previous experience gives him unique insight into every major trend occurring in 2021, and has Justin poised to make Tron a major player in the DeFi space and beyond. Scott Melker and Justin Sun further discuss working for Ripple in 2012, graduating from UPenn, the pre-Tron days, solving the scalability problem, building Tron, 2017 ICOs, paper Bitcoin, learning from Jack Ma, dot-com and crypto bubbles, the digital Yuan, North Korea, the future of Tron and more. ––– RSK/IOV Sovryn is a decentralised Bitcoin trading and lending platform and one of the first Bitcoin-native DeFi platforms. Earn interest on your Bitcoin and get paid for lending assets, with up to 5x leverage on long and short trades using USDT, BTC and bitcoin-backed stablecoins. All with no KYC. Click the link below to get your first month’s trading fees for free. Be one of the first 100 and claim a $100 bonus! Visit Sovryn.app/wolf for more info. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 9.5% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account. --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co

What is up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Today's guest is the founder and CEO of Tron, which is one of 2017's largest ICOs, raising $70 million and to this day is still a top 20 cryptocurrency by market cap. There's also a lot more to Justin than just TRX. Justin Sun is one of the most well-known individuals in the crypto space and is by all definitions an OG. I'm looking forward to dissecting his thoughts on Bitcoin's recent rise, better understanding the current state of DeFi and altcoins, and getting his insider perspective on regulation in the United States, China, and all around the world.

Justin, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. So before we get into the questions, once again, this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. We're twice a week. I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. This show is powered by Blockworks Group, a media company with over 20 podcasts in their network. You can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. And if you like the podcast and follow me on Twitter, you can check out my website,

join my newsletter. You can do both those things at thewolfofallstreets.io. This episode is sponsored by Voyager and Sovereign. Stay tuned for more information on both later in the episode. So Justin, I don't know if you know this, but I also went to the University of Pennsylvania. I interviewed Kevin Wang recently from Nervos, who also went there. Do you know anyone else in the crypto space who went to Penn? Yeah. So from my years, because I went to Penn around like 2011. So most of my classmates these days is work for like J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, like Goldman Sachs,

doing like traditional investment banking stuff. For entrepreneur, I don't think I really know someone who is in my age doing startups. But of course, as we know, three person is all from Penn, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, and Donald Trump. Of course, everybody knows them. I went there in the 1990s, so I'm a little bit older than you. The other one was Michael Milken, who went to jail for financial crimes. He was the other famous one when I was there. It's interesting. I had a very similar experience. Honestly, everyone I went to school with ended up on Wall Street. Not that many went the entrepreneur route, except for, of course, Elon Musk, who was there right before me.

So we have that in common. So let's talk a bit about your background. Like I said, Tron was one of the biggest and most popular and hyped ICOs in 2017. What were you doing before that and what made you decide to launch Tron? Yes, definitely. So before we launched Tron in 2012, I got into the crypto space. I think the first company I worked for is Ripple. So I helped Ripple to develop their Great China community. And I'm with Ripple

in those very early days, around 2013, 2014, 2015. And then at that time, Ripple, the chairman, Chris Larsen, and also IDG Capital, invested in me to develop the first blockchain company in China. And then I also managed to develop the first live streaming platform in China. And also the team these days is also developed like DLive. So recently it's also kind of like popular in United States and Turkey. So it's very active now. And then in 2017, we decided to start Chuan. I think the original idea is trying to solve the scalability problem on Ethereum, which is what we do today.

So we have been working on improving the scalability problem on the blockchain industry for quite a long time. And I think right now we start to see some progress, right? So like I think we will cover later like USDT on Tron is extremely popular and we provide lots of the alternatives for the people in the blockchain industry to move their coins in a very fast, instant speed and zero fee. Which is, as you said, you were thinking about this in 2016, 2017, when you ICO, and maybe because there was a bear market and crypto had sort of this downtime, the problem didn't come into focus as it has this year. But now we see this DeFi explosion and anyone who's moved money around on Ethereum or has participated in Uniswap sees these insane gas fees. Right. So now we finally really see the problem that you were looking to fix years ago. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

And I believe have a very good, basically instant and almost zero transaction fee blockchain is extremely important for our industry. So I can give you the data. So basically, two years ago, when USDT is only available on Omni, at that time, it's not even available on Ethereum. It's only available on Omni. The USDT transaction per day is only 8,000. So after it developed on Ethereum, it grew to around 200k per day. So today on Chuan, it's almost 500k per day. And I believe it's going to grow to way above 1 million transactions per day very soon. So for example, if right now today's USDT transaction is around like 800,000. So it's already 100 times more than we have two years ago.

And I believe, yeah, in the future, it's gonna grow to like 80 million transactions per day, maybe in the next two years. And I believe this is really like the machine who is driving the bull markets right now. Imagine if you today, you can only still use Omni, takes you like half a day to transact the USDT. It's impossible for traders, hedge funds, all different kinds of the fund manager to trade crypto between different changes in the first place. So that's why I believe if we really have a very good infrastructure for the blockchain, instance B, zero fee, our value, not only Trump, but also like Bitcoin, Ethereum, all the assets on blockchain platform, we have like even like tenfold, like a hundredfold, this kind of the increase potential.

If our blockchain is really resilient, instant and almost zero fee. Yeah, that that makes perfect sense. So I'm curious. Now we're seeing so many stable coins, right? I mean, USDT is $24 billion of a trillion dollar crypto market cap. It's become a much smaller part of the ecosystem, even though, as you said, it is fundamental to the way that people move money. I'm curious how you think the emergence of these other stable coins affects that and also if you have any concerns about tether in general i don't but i know that there's always the the inevitable thud around it and the the case in the in new york and such yeah exactly so i believe like uh when you offer like product

you want to offer like different kind of the uh product. So that's why I think this year, so we also collaborate with TUSD already. So to issue TUSD on Trump, I believe this is gonna be available at the end of Q1. I believe TUSD gonna release TUSD on Trump. I believe these days, for example, TUSD, USDC, their advantage is they have the instant fiat on rent. I don't know if you tried USDC and TUSD before.

So right now, and so you can instantly deposit US dollar and get like one USDC and one TUSD. So they have basically instant fiat on-ramp for these two stable coin. And of course, USDT don't have that. If you want to mint USDT, you need to wire the money. So it's take you like two or three days. So that's why I believe so different kind of the stable coin target different kind of the markets, right? But I believe even the header growth is going to benefit from USDC and TUSD.

For example, even myself, sometimes I use TUSD and USDC as a ramp to swap to the USDT in the first place. I actually did that today because somebody required USDC. I had USDT. Exactly. So that's why I believe this is kind of like the future roadmap. So we're going to have lots of stable coin.

For example, I believe Facebook is going to issue their Dime, right? I think Dime is going to be available for everybody. I think we are happy to even collaborate with them to deliver Dime on the Tron blockchain. So I think we want to serve all the stablecoin issuers and to provide the best infrastructure support for them. Do you have any concerns about the Tether situation, whether it's backed, whether there'll be legal trouble, and read the interview and the podcast of Paolo recently. So I think he basically focused on address those concerns. I think Tether from their information they release is one to one backed. And also

Tether is also trying really hard to comply with all the regulators. Even we all know they have some lawsuits they need to settle. But I believe Tether is in a better situation, at least compared to two years and one year ago. I think they have to be. And that sort of, I guess, segues into the next obvious topic, which is regulation. And you worked at Ripple. You see what's going on, obviously. And there was immediately rumors that TRX was next, right? Which maybe was just a result of one person on Twitter. I don't know. And you immediately addressed it. But that specific situation aside, how much concern do you have about heavy-handed regulation, particularly from, I guess, the United States and China in the future and our space in general? I guess you can speak specifically to Tron, but how it could affect

crypto as a whole. Yes, definitely. When I first joined the company in 2013, I believe even at that time, the regulation is also always a big topic in our industry. I remember at that time in 2013, the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation got arrested because of the money laundering problem in BitInstant. I don't know if you know those times. It's almost seven years. I wasn't there if you know those times, it's only almost seven years. I wasn't there, but I'm good friends with Charlie Shrem. So I've heard the stories many times. Exactly. So that's why, I mean, at that time, right, we only have like very few crypto exchange regulation is already become like like a topic in the industry.

So that's why I think when I first started Tron, I think we always invest a lot of the money and energy into regulation. So for our ICO, we do like all the KYC to prevent US customer and also sanction countries from participate in the ICO. And also, of course, we didn't sell to any US citizens on the ICO. And we're doing a lot of things too. We hired a very prestigious law firm, write a legal memo in very early days. And also, of course, we delivered the product

even before we launch the tokens. So which eliminates the security risk of TRX. So that's why I believe TRX is one of the, like many cryptocurrencies are really focused on try to be like compliant in both like US and China. And we are very confident on that. So as I like already say in Twitter, so we have never been even asked by any regulators about the TRX or anything around the globe. And also, of course, as you see recently, I believe we have lots of good relationship

with Chinese government. For example, like I was recently hired by the Chinese State Reform Commission, the information magazine as a board of director. So to advise on how to develop the blockchain industry in China. And also we are happy to collaborate with all the governments around the globe, because I believe blockchain is some kind of the technology to improve everybody's situation. It's not like AI, right? So AI maybe pull somebody out of job, because machine can done people's job but i think blockchain gonna like

for example if you can wire money from uh for example china to united states in like one second right it benefits lots of people benefits the whole society and not even like mentioning blockchain actually has lots of other use cases. For example, if like all the people in the United States is using this kind of the blockchain ID, right? So there won't be like dispute on the votes, right? So everybody gonna like vote with a valid ID, right? So, and also like everybody can get access to their vote status by their digital ID. I mean, which is basically very common in the blockchain industry, right? But there's no, people right now, they don't really know like blockchain industry

actually can even change the world system. So that's why I believe blockchain industry will have a numerous like use case. And this is like one of the most like revolutionary technology we have in 21st century, I believe. So definitely we can see the huge potential. And not even mentioning like recently OCC announced like they allow like banks to start to move their money on the blockchain, which I think is amazing

because blockchain is designed to replace Swift. Swift is very old. It's like almost like it's something from World War II. It's so funny that they call it Swift when it's so slow exactly exactly so you you can't imagine like i i believe swift is some of the technology is um basically invented around world war ii and still be like used for uh everybody today you know? So, and I believe, you know, this is really the time we can get something to replace like Swift to provide this kind of the 24,

like seven many transaction experience to the people around the globe. So some people like, they tell me, like, when they move, like, USDT on Trump, compared to, like, the real life, they're going to move money, right, from China to US, from SWIFT. The difference is huge, you know.

So once they use, like, cryptocurrency, they can't even get back to the real life. It's like the difference of like being in an old train and putting coal in the engine and now like flying, flying on a, flying on a private jet. It really is that big of a difference. And it's, it's really, it's, it's really pretty crazy. And I think another, you know, important use case or another downside of Swift is not only how slow it is, but you can't send a small amount of money for the wire transaction. The fees, the timing.

If you want to send $5 from China to the United States, you can't do that with a bank. Exactly. So we should make even charitable donations. It's impossible. like charitable donation is impossible, right? So everybody wants to like donate five, like $1 to like a charity foundation like in like Africa. But the problem is if the transaction fee is like $10 is only like feasible

if you want to donate like above like $1,000, which already eliminate like 99% of the people right so not like everybody have like a spare like one thousand dollars to donate right people only have like one uh one dollar five dollars uh i read like um a thesis about like this kind of the charity donation, actually like 99% of the people is more like donor. And also actually for theory, people encourage a small amount donor because a small amount donor, they can consistently make those donations, right?

So like $1 per week, right? So everybody can donate for like a year. So not only I think this is more like benefits like the charity course, but also I believe this really enables this kind of the brotherhood between different kind of the countries. Because if you right now, if you see like most of the charitable activities is only happening domestically, there is no like international, right? Even like very large like foundations um when they try to raise fund like internationally it's very hard so that's why i believe like blockchain also has a tremendous like user cases in uh charity as well that's so interesting that's actually i've never heard that and all the conversations that i've had about it and it it's so true. I can, you know, if there's a hurricane or an earthquake outside of the United States,

every time if you're in the United States, you want to donate, you basically have to do it to the Red Cross. And you know that that money is being wasted or and you know that and like you said, people are giving $5, you know, text your $5 donation, you know, that money is being wasted and not getting there immediately or to the place it's needed. That's really a brilliant use case that I never gave much thought to. So back to, you brought up an interesting point about the OCC. They've said now that banks can custody Bitcoin crypto assets. And as you said, they've now said that they can use stable coins basically to move money. So just playing devil's advocate, right?

We know that stable coins are better. We know that the blockchain is the answer. But should we fear that the banks are taking it over and it's becoming sort of a government tool as opposed to what it was before, which was a free way for us to move money outside of the banking system. Exactly. So for myself, I want to like collaborate with everybody.

Even for like those banks, I want to collaborate with them because I believe like different kind of the person have like different kind of needs. So for example, I can give you a very good example have like different kind of the needs. So for example, I can give like, give you a very good example for actually like,

even like the institution banks can benefit what we call like rebels, right? This kind of the crypto world a lot by like Grayscale. So basically when first like Grayscale. So basically when first like Grayscale design is only like offered to to

like basically regulated money to invest into the crypto in the first place. So that's why when first Grayscale invented there is not not a lot of people use Grayscale invented, there is not a lot of people use Grayscale to invest in the first place

because for the rebels, they want to basically hide their money, right? So they want to go through like GBTC to buy BTC and that they don't believe in GBTC in the first place because they believe this is like paper Bitcoin, right? I want to hold my Bitcoin in my wallet, right? But there is a numerous amount of the fund like a pension fund, they can only invest basically the GBDC or ETF, right? So that's why when those institutions find out,

wow, GBTC is a really good vehicle to invest like Bitcoin. The Bitcoin price pumped dramatically because of the institution money. So recently, like a lot of like hedge fund and also lots of the regulated money asked me where to buy BTC. I all refer them to buy from GBTC. Even they have to pay like 20%, 30% premium. But still, this is the only way, right? So that's why I believe a lot of the regulated money and banks can really benefit the blockchain industry too. For stablecoin, I believe this is the same. people can move like US dollar freely, right? Tron, Ethereum, other blockchain platform

is going to dramatically increase the people's interest on blockchain. And of course, on cryptocurrency assets. So that's why I always believe like more people come to our world, the better. So even some people, right? They have different kind of the risk preference right some people they can only invest like in a regulated way so for example like so today for usdt you don't need to get your address like register register right in like any kind of the platform. You can transfer them anonymously.

I believe in the future, banks may even have some, for example, they collaborate with TUSD, USDC. You might need to even have every address you transact from their platform KYC, which is obviously is not a good thing for the crypto world. But I believe, for example, like Wells Fargo, if they want to get on Tron platform, they need to get all their customer Tron addresses KYC on Wells Fargo platform, for example. Right. But I think this is a good thing. So at least all the Wells Fargo platform, right? For example. But I think this is a good thing, right? So at least all the Wells Fargo customers can move money on the blockchain in the future, right?

Yeah. Yeah, so then I guess the next inevitable question is central bank digital currencies. I mean, you're in Hong Kong, obviously, but China is experimenting with the digital one. I think that that is the obvious future. So should we have concern for our stable coins when governments issue their own and try to obviously compete with the dollar with their own digital currencies? Yes.

I think DCEP right now is kind of like more like tested inside of China. Right now, I don't think like DCEP wants to move like internationally because, you know, China have this kind of the currency control. Right. So you can't like move money from China to outside of China, basically. So I think DCEP will be first tested domestically. And I hope one day DCEP can also move internationally. So that's my hope. And some of the Chuang members, so basically they designed like Chuang protocol before.

They now work for DCEP. So that's why I know like some of the inside stories in DCEP. So I may, sometimes I even joke like, you can just ask like DCEP to use like Tron solutions. Yeah, if you're building it anyways. Exactly, you don't need to review it, right? So that's something you guys design in the first place. So that's why I believe eventually,

I think DCEP will be same as Stein, right? USDT, TUSD, like USDC, right? So it's just like, they're going to compete with one another. Just like today, you know, like US dollar compete with Chinese yen, compete with Japanese yen, compete with like Korean won, right? So all different kind of the currency going to compete with one another. And the people who love to use them going to choose like one over another for different kind of reasons. Right. So hopefully it won't be still a threat to the ones that we're used to using.

We'll have the freedom and we'll have more people who are comfortable with transacting digitally and hopefully it'll be bullish for everyone. So I want to go back to, obviously something we touched on earlier, which is a huge hot topic conversation, DeFi, right? And as you said,

I think it's clear that Ethereum is having trouble scaling. I've heard people liken Ethereum to sort of like a world computer from the 1980s. It's extremely slow. Obviously, it can't handle the transaction. Therefore, gas fees are extremely high. So now we've seen the interest in DeFi explode. What does DeFi look like now in 2021 and moving forward as it matures and as companies like yours come up with solutions to the clear problems that we're seeing now? Yes, definitely. I believe Ethereum proved the potential of DeFi in 2020, right? So even, I mean, Tron get into DeFi like very early in, so basically Tron and Ethereum both started DeFi in 2020,

sorry, in 2018. So after two years development, people start to believe in DeFi. So in 2018, nobody believed in DeFi in the first place, right? Very hard to convince people to get into DeFi industry. But I think 2020, everybody started to believe DeFi is basically a very good use case for a lot of things. For example, like all kinds of the different small tokens is trading on UnionSwap and JustSwap these days, rather than even some like very small tokens, which we call like Shakecoin focused exchanges. And also a lot of people starting to swap their stablecoin curve instead of trading on like Cumberland, like Binance, like lots of the big exchanges. And also, I believe Ethereum also come to a very big problem, which is scalability problem in 2020.

So before that, people didn't realize this is a very big problem we need to deal with it now, right? So, but after like 2020, I believe everybody in the industry think the transaction fee is insane. Even these days, I don't know if you notice, like Kraken even charge people for deposit money into the Kraken exchange.

I believe in the future, even more, because, you know, blockchain is going to grow anyway. So that's why I think people are going to, I think in the future, like Coinbase, Binance, may even in the future going to charge money for you, deposit money into Ethereum, in the Ethereum network like ERC20 like USDT, USDC or the stable coin and different kind of tokens you need to pay like deposit fee right which is kind of like crazy but exchange have cost on that because every people you deposit

they need to sweep the coin into the exchange addresses, cost them lots of money, right? So right now these days sometimes transaction is a hundred dollars. So that's why yeah, I believe like this kind of layer two solution or like layer one solution like Tron are really gonna play a very important role in 2021. For example, I can give you some example, like USDT on Chuang, of course is the first thing. And then I think second, you can see like, just swap and also justLend and JustStable, this is all like the compound MakerDAO and the UnionSwap on Tron. Really, we have seen a huge use case on those platform as well. People really start to realize uh importance um of the trunk ecosystem and we're

gonna unleash the um uh defy so for example i can give you some example please yeah today like for you if you want to trade on a union swap you can't trade even like for example if you want to trade on a union swap, you can't trade even like, for example, if you want to do like $1,000 trade, it's not worth it even, right? A union swap, right? Yeah. Yeah. I literally went on there quickly

because I just wanted to do Tether to USDC or something. Like I said earlier, I was just trying to quickly do it. And it was like $45 to swap a stable coin for a stable coin. Exactly, exactly. Sovereign is an uncensorable, no KYC, Bitcoin trading and lending platform and one of the very first Bitcoin native DeFi platforms. Finally, start trading your Bitcoin in a permissionless and decentralized way today just by connecting your private wallet. Earn interest on your Bitcoin and get paid for lending assets via the Sovereign Decentralized Exchange.

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Even better, you can now automatically earn interest on crypto holdings. Currently, they're offering up to 6.5 APR on Bitcoin and up to 9.5% on USDC. Yes, you heard that correctly, up to 9.5%. And there are no limits or lockups, which means your funds always stay liquid. Find out why so many people are making the switch to Voyager. Visit investvoyager.com or search for Voyager on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and get $25 in free Bitcoin when you use the promo code Scott25. That's S-C-O-T-T-2-5. So that's why I mean, UnionSwap on Tron. So basically right now, JustSwap, it really benefits lots of people. And also JustLend is the same so you can lend usdt btc and the ethereum both on trunk very easy to use and you can use it all the time with almost zero transaction fee and also of course today we can handle for trunk network we can handle for Tron network, we can handle like over

50 million like transaction per day. So right now it's only 2 million of it. So we still have like 25 times, you know, so to grow. Not even counted the layer two solution on Tron, you can even have even more transactions. So, but some people may ask, why Tron right now is not... Because people may think Tron is going to overtake Ethereum.

Why it's not happening now? I think one of the biggest reasons is it still takes lots of time for Tron to grow its asset base in the first place. For example, right now we only have USDT. And this year, early this year, I believe Q1, we're going to release TUSD. And later, Q2, Q3, we're going to release more regulated stablecoin on Chuan. And also, of course, you know, we started BTC on Chuan later last year, and we already grow to 15K BTC, which was like 600 million US dollars today. I believe it's going to grow to like 6 billion very soon in 2021. So after we grow our asset base,

which is Bitcoin, Ethereum, different kind of the stablecoin, different kind of the assets on Tron platform, you will start to see the network effects and the Tron ecosystem gonna really explode, just like Ethereum. So the difference between Tron and Ethereum is, right now, even for myself, I'm bullish on Ethereum, like Bitcoin, those like assets, crypto assets. By Ethereum, we have seen it's reached to like the bottleneck for the transactions, right? Which is very hard for the people on the Ethereum to start to scale themselves.

For example, like Compound start to develop their own like compound chain, right? Try to solve this problem for their customers. And also we have seen a lot of the people start to migrate to Trump, right? For example, like USDT right now is almost like 9 billion US dollars, which I believe is going to surpass 10 billion very soon. I believe once we release TOSD on Tron, it's also going to increase dramatically. And of course, we believe in the future, a lot of Ethereum developers like AMPL is starting to migrate to Tron. So lots of people are going to migrate to Tron

to try to scale their product, right, in the first place. So that's why I definitely believe in 2021, Tron going to become like one of the most important solution for scalability in our industry. And we will start to see the explosion of assets which we call like TV TVL right right and also assets on the blockchain in Tron even like more so right, I think the whole TVL on Trump is around something like $12 billion, something like that. So it's already four times more than the Trump market cap. I believe in this year, we're going to reach to even $100 billion.

We're going to sit on top of Trump and move on Trump platform every day. Yeah, that's interesting. I read, it was just news very recently that total value locked in DeFi was at 23 billion or something, but it sounds like they might not be counting every blockchain there. So that's the problem.

So I already like contact Y matrix, you know, lots of the like Glassnode, lots of our industry data industry data providers tried to include Tron blockchain, you know, they, they all a lot. Lots of them only develop Ethereum. So they need to develop on Trump because Trump these days USDT

we have almost like $9 billion. So even like it's more like half of the Ethereum volume. So I think these days it's more like half of the Ethereum volume. So I think this day is going to explode. We're going to maybe even more than Ethereum. So it's definitely important for those matrix providers

to start to also track the data on Tron platform. That makes sense. So it's interesting because obviously there's ethereum there's tron that clearly the future here is d5 i mean it's like it feels like now bitcoin's a store of value and everything else is d5 right but so there's thousands of companies trying to compete in the d5 space when you started in crypto it was bitcoin eth Ethereum and Ripple and then slowly, right? And then I make up not even Ethereum. So Ethereum, not even Ethereum, right?

Right. At that time, it's only Bitcoin and Litecoin. Right. At that time, you know, the exchange only trades Bitcoin. So I even recommend to some exchange to lease Litecoin, but they believe like Litecoin don't have legitimacy. So they only trade Bitcoin. It's so crazy. So, but now, I mean, I haven't checked CoinMarketCap,

but 5, 10, 15,000 projects, I don't even know. So what do you make of there being so many, you know, even, yes, just very recently, Mark Cuban went on Twitter and said, he called it the cryptos, which I thought was very funny. But, you know, the cryptos are exact trading exactly like the dotcom bubble. We'll see, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, whatever will be Amazon, Google and everything else will die. What do you make of there being so many projects?

Do you think that it's like that? Do you think that so many of them are going to disappear? Yeah. First of all, I believe maybe Mark Cuban, what he said is right, but it's more for 2017. Yeah, I'd say, yeah, right. 2017 make me feel like it's more like a bubble. It's more like.com in 2000.

But I believe 2021 is for fundamentals. Let's take some examples. So for 2017, we may feel like Bitcoin is only for traders, for traders for the volatility of bitcoin right but for uh this year i think lots of people really start to believe bitcoin is like the digital goal in the future so even the public listed companies start to move their balance sheet on bitcoin to reserve it's more like it's not for short-term period of trading, right? It's for reserve. You know, it's like gold, you know, it's not like for short-term trading. So that's why make me feel like this is like fundamental, you know.

And also for like Ethereum and also for Tron, I believe there's a huge amount of the growth in the fundamental in the first place. So, for example, in 2017, we didn't see much application develop on Ethereum and on Tr Trump in the first place. Ethereum is only for ICO, which makes it only for the volatility, something like that. But in 2021, we've seen Ethereum, as I said, TVL is like $20 billion or something. It's even more than what Ethereum worth in the future, I believe. And for Tron, it's the same story. We have over $12 billion seat on the platform. And our market cap is only around three billion dollars so it's even four times more than the money we hold you know so that's why i believe for lots of

the product in our industry this time i think the growth is based on fundamentals instead of bubble the people who are still talking about bubbles because they really don't understand what's going on in the industry, I believe, in the first place. And also, I'm super bullish about this year and also for the future. The reason is because I believe there's always going to be a lot of the innovations. I can give you some examples. When 2015, when Alibaba go IPO on New York Stock Exchange, everybody believe even the e-commerce war is ended in China. So Alibaba is going to be dominated in China.

But recently, you know, there is a company called PDD. Chinese name is Pinduoduo. It's starting to grow like dramatically. They have lots of fans in the United States for those traders. Because Fintodo has grown like a hundred times a year, it's become one of the biggest opponents to Alibaba for only for two years of growth. So that's why I believe for crypto industry is same as the e-commerce. We're going to always have opportunities. So the always the secret recipe for the competition is always serve your customer with the best experience,

with the low cost for them. You know, that's the only way. There is no like something like you can dominate the markets forever right i think this is for ethereum as well right uh if the ethereum uh can't like solve this kind of security problem like tron gonna take over right if we can't solve the security problem if one day we have the same problem a new blockchain gonna take over tron so i believe this kind of the competition will always uh exist uh i i think like uh uh nobody is immune from from this kind of the competition so that's why i believe as as one of the um in, in this industry, I believe we will always need to try really hard to fight,

to win the trust of our customer. It's like gladiators in the Roman Coliseum, you know, only in the end, only a few can be left, be left standing. So I think it's fair to say that a lot of companies will disappear based on that, you know, over time and that the best best man will win or the best, you know, utility with the best utility and the cheapest fees, sort of, as you said. I want to touch on like, maybe a lot of people don't know, but I realize that you, Jack Ma was a mentor for you, right? And you were kind of the youngest person ever to come out of that mentorship.

What was that? What was it like to have someone like that teaching you? Yes, I believe this is extremely important for me to went to Hupan University around like 2015, you know. At that time, you know, we didn't even have trial, you know, I only have a very small team. It's around like, 40 people, right? So we are doing like a very small product called the paywall call me. So

it's a small like product around like 2015. I believe the mentorship of Jack Ma, and also his idea and the lessons like really like improve myself and my company like dramatically. Right now we have over like 600 employees around the globe with multiple product lines and multiple product we have developed like every day and even grow even bigger. So that's why I believe Jack Ma's mentorship really helps me a lot. And also I believe Jack Ma is a person who really have this kind of the vision and the mission to grow the product and platform for the next generation. So, so as he always said, like Jack Ma is not interested to develop something is like

best for the people in the next one year. So he gonna try to develop a platform or product for the next 10 years, next 100 years, something like that. So that's why I believe Jack Ma is the person who really gave me the confidence on the blockchain. Because I believe blockchain is also something is we right now today, all of our development today is not for the people in 2021 it is for the people in in the 2050 something like that you know so so so our product gonna used by the people for the for for the next generations so that's why it's just like, also like Elon Musk, right? He said like, so today on the old money

and capital he accumulated and the technology he built is for the people on Mars, right? So even those people didn't even exist, but it's for them. It's not for the people on Earth. It's interesting because i think so many people in this industry came in as traders or for the money or for whatever reason so everything is

so short-sighted and then you realize that when you're talking about the actual underlying technology and what the future can be that we're building for decades exactly if not centuries exactly and also um by the way i believe we have some synergy even with Elon Musk, this kind of the Mars colonization, you know. So, for example, what's the best way to move money between Mars and the Earth? You know, Swift. Right. So I believe like like blockchain is the only way right so like even uh recently i watched like mandalorian you know uh uh and and and and also i believe bitcoin is the solution for uh this kind of the interplanet communication and and so so basically even in the mandalorian when um uh people are trying to pay

uh uh the mando you know uh mando refused to receive on those empire like currency or something yeah so he said like the empire is gone so so they have no credits so so i can't accept like empire tokens you know so so so that's why why I believe like even for maybe like 200 years after today, you know, people are going to still accept like Bitcoin on like Mars or some like planet we don't even know, you know? They're going to take like, still take Bitcoin as their reserve, you know?

It makes sense. It won't be paper dollars. I can tell you that. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, printer. They might, they might have, the printer might be shooting them all the way to Mars by then. You never know. Do you have any idea where Jack Ma is now? Oh, so I think right now, so I see a lot of rumors.

I can tell you Jack Ma, first of all, he's definitely okay. He's in mainland China, and live a very happy life to go golf like every day. So I think lots of people like worry about him, but actually, he is okay, you know. And also I believe the Alibaba relationship with regulators is also doing good in China. So I won't like worry about like Checkmai and Alibaba a lot, especially on the regulations. Yeah, usually it's just a rumor when you see things like that, a lot, especially on the regulations. Yeah. Usually it's just a rumor when you see things like that,

the news catches something and kind of runs with it. I remember there was a time where they were wondering where you were. Yeah, exactly. I have to, I have to do like a live streaming, you know, prove I'm in like San Francisco, uh right so we with the golden gate bridge on my back so i mean you've been here for a long time you've been a part of this community you've seen the best and the worst of it yeah which is i guess maybe for you isn't even an understatement but like you just said i mean you're constantly having to prove yourself,

even to the level of proving where you are and that you still exist, right? Exactly. What is it like dealing with that level of negativity and criticism all the time? I believe the reason why you get into this industry is very important. So if you only get into the industry, it's because somebody is going to say good things about you. It only depends on other people's words or comments. that's the reason you get into this industry you can't last very long you know so so so in our space as you said right there is lots of the misunderstanding and also for lots of the people outside of our industry they they also don't understand blockchain

at all they believe like all the people get into blockchain it's all for like very short-sighted like trading or is only for like scam people you know for like did those uh things also happen on bitcoin right so people believe like people use bitcoin is only for like money laundry or for like some illegal activities this kind of the uh misunderstanding even exists today for lots of the regulators around the globe right so when they heard like bitcoin the first reaction they will feel is like for money laundry illegal drugs yeah exactly drugs we need to prevent this from happening something like that so that's why i believe uh you need to be like genuinely believe you are doing something good for the society good for the community good for for the people around the globe to

to be sustainable in the first place as I just like tell you you need to genuinely believe blockchain technology is for the next generation it's for the future people it's gonna be benefits everyone around the globe you you need to like genuinely believe those things and you are trying to do something improve the quality the life quality for everybody around the globe even even for those people who hate you. For example, Tron is a permissionless network. Everybody can use USDT on Tron, everything, without even my permission.

In the first place, that's the world I want to do. Exactly. That's the world. That's the difference between us and the traditional finance, right? Traditional finance is if they don't like somebody, they can sanction them, right? Proven them, freeze their account. So we don't want those things to happen. So that's why we built some people like comments, you know, like some people like use like USDT on every day, but they still talking bad mouth about Justin Sun, you know, every day. But this is kind of like the exactly the world we want to build in the first place, right?

So we want to build a world like no matter like you like bad mouth about like anybody, you can still enjoy your financial like services without your account get froze by anybody right without your transaction get blocked by the So that's why I believe you need to genuinely believe all this to be survived in like all the, just as you said, like the negativity, the misunderstanding. I think the misunderstanding from the ordinary people should be fine because they're going to only like talk. They're going gonna learn. Yeah, exactly. But if this kind of the misunderstanding is from big media regulators, banks gonna cause you a lot of trouble in the first place. So for example,

I can give you some example. When I first started my company, because the company is based on blockchain i got like my bank account closed by by by different banks all the way you know even for some bank account i never use this to do any crypto transaction at all they hear the word yeah still they're gonna close my account right and then uh i i received lots of misunderstanding uh from my friends who didn't do crypto you know so so so that's why i believe uh there's lots of misunderstanding but i believe this is come

along with the the thing you are doing. The more revolutionary the things you are doing, the more misunderstanding and the more negativity come along with this kind of the career. I watched like an episode with Elon Musk. He talked about these things all the time. When he first devolved SpaceX, he got lots of the negative comments and even attacks from NASA, from the people. He adored those people. A lot of the people he sees as a hero attacks him.

Of course. Yeah, they don't want SpaceX to be successful. So they attack SpaceX all the time. So I think even Elon Musk needs to survive in those times to make SpaceX the greatest space company in the old time. I think those like drive needs to become from the reason why you get into this industry and why you invented this company right in the first place.

I mean, even SpaceX and Tesla were basically one launch away from not existing, right? Like one failed launch. It's really crazy when you look back at it and the risk taken. And I think in this industry, you have the added element, as you said, of sort of retail speculation, obviously, like seeing your coin go 15 sats, 2000 sats, 100 sats, 500 sats, you know, of sort of retail speculation, obviously like seeing your coin go 15 sats, 2000 sats, a hundred sats, 500, you know, that, that crazy volatility. And so you have, in my experience, there's emotional people who have lost money and they just want to blame somebody, right? We're in a unique place where people maybe believe in the technology, but at

the end of the day, they're making big financial decisions. And when they lose, generally, people don't want to take that responsibility themselves. Exactly. So that's why I believe the hold strategy is the best strategy in our industry. Because eventually, Bitcoin, I believe all the good cryptocurrency ecosystem is going to survive eventually with extremely large market cap. For example, because I'm an early Tesla investor in 2012, so at that time Tesla price is also extremely low, right? But I mean, Tesla have the same volatility compared to Bitcoin, right? Yeah, exactly. So, but if you always hold Tesla, don't like trade with leverage and the margin you may get like liquidated. But if you always hold the Tesla stock, if you're seeing this in two-year, five-year return, it gives you a very good return eventually.

Yeah. So it's about believing and you can basically ignore all of that. But again, that goes to us talking about, so you're basically saying if you buy TRX, view it as what it'll be in 10 years, not what it will be in 10 minutes or 10 weeks or 10 months. Yeah, exactly. I think you need to have this kind of the, I'm not like saying you can't do like short term speculation, right? Which lots of people doing that for day traders. But I think if you want to really make a really big financial decision,

as you said, like invest into a project in a long term, you definitely need to understand what the company and the protocol is doing. So for the Tesla in 2012 2012 when i invest into tesla it's like eight almost eight years ago uh the same time i invest into bitcoin uh i believe tesla is because i believe tesla is building the apple for uh for for basically they are building smart cars, right? It's just like Apple building smartphones. Smartphone, yeah. Exactly.

So for today, I think for us, we are developed like smart assets and smart money, right? So that's why this is really important in the first place, right? So that's why I believe if you want to really invest like a project in the longterm and I believe if you really want to make money in, in, in long, longterm, five years, 10 years, you need to at least put the 50% of your assets in the long term holding. Sure. I say 70. So yeah, I think so. Yeah. And I'm a trader, but I will only trade with 15% of my assets because I know that I'm not smarter than the market. I'm probably just getting lucky if it's going well.

Do you think that Elon Musk and people like that already own Bitcoin and just haven't talked about it? You think Mark Zuckerberg owns Bitcoin? Yeah, I definitely believe they they definitely own a lot of bitcoin not even like uh uh uh joking about it uh why why the reason i i start to believe lots of the people in the world actually uh um own bitcoins is because like 2016, I started to hear some news. They said like even North Korea hold lots of bitcoins.

Oh yeah. Yeah, North Korea probably is the first like country put their country reserve to Bitcoin. So I started to realize, wow, even because North Korea is like heavily on US like sanctions, you know, so even like North Korea started to realize the value of Bitcoin, you know, make me really believe this is some kind of the amazing like technology and reserve for people. Because even the enemies of United States

start to realize the value of itself in the first place. So that's why it's something like, you know, for the matrix, you know, we are like new, right? But even for the matrix itself, start to find out, wow, the value of the things you invented in the first place, right, start to make me feel like eventually at the end of the day, not only like Zuckerberg, Elon Musk,

but also all the countries will start to move their countries reserve into Bitcoin eventually. Yeah, central banks will hold it just like they have gold in the past, or now even, which makes sense. So I'm curious, I know that we're kind of running out of time, but having been through the entire lifetime of all of this, launching in 2017, going through the crypto winter, is there anything that you would have done differently,, 2019, 2020, those three extremely tough years. It's a bear market, all the value going down, even Bitcoin going down almost 85% to 90%, right? We still survive in this industry. And in those three years,

we built numerous product and the fundamentals in those three years. I believe we really built like enough fundamentals for the party in 2021. So that's why I believe this year, the bull market is gonna be like based on fundamentals. It's not like based on bubble anymore. So that's why I believe I have confidence to say,

this year is the fundamental year for Bitcoin and for Tron, of course. And I think if I try to do something differently, I think we should even be more radical on building the stuff in the industry, to hire more people, convince more people to join our industry. Because at early 2020, in the early 2020, you know, like the March 12th,th the price like even bitcoin price

3800 yeah so 3800 and uh some people my friend like text me should i buy bitcoin at that time i don't even have the like a boss i did, yeah. Same. And now they're asking again, right. They asked at 3,800 maybe, and now they're asking you like 38 pounds. Exactly. So because at that time, uh, the reason is, you know, COVID, you know, start you, you know, like, like, uh, affects everybody, you know, the, the stock price crashed like crazy. I don't want them to lose money, right, at that time. So I told them to hold out for a second, at least, you know, you need to be prepared for the long term at that time, you know. Yeah, it's crazy to think how far we've come in the 10 months since March 12th.

Exactly, it's like 10 years. Like in March, like 12th makes you feel it's like the end of the world, March 12th. It's like 10 years. Like in March, like 12th make you feel it's like the end of the world or something like that. It's, yeah. And at that point, I mean, yeah, it's insane to think back of the mentality then versus the mentality now and how quickly it changed through the summer.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. Well, I know we've run out of time. I want to thank you so much for sharing. I'm really excited to see what's coming from you and from the industry in general in the coming years, because I think that this is truly the tipping point, after a year, when we, uh, review our videos, we, we're gonna see like, uh, lots of things gonna change, uh, in, in 2021. We'll just do it again. We'll do it again at the end of the year. Thank you so much, Justin. I appreciate it.