On July 25, the chief executive officer of the Tron Foundation, Justin Sun, attended a party to celebrate the first anniversary of Tron’s acquisition of file-sharing platform BitTorrent, despite having canceled the highly-hyped lunch meeting between himself and business magnate Warren Buffet that had been scheduled for the same day.
Justin Sun Celebrates Tron Influencer Day
Sun celebrated ‘Tron Influencer Day’ alongside ten YouTubers who had been flown to San Francisco to celebrate the anniversary. The party took place the day after Sun published a letter in Chinese on Weibo apologizing to “the public, media, officials and regulatory authorities” for his actions leading to the cancellation of lunch with Warren Buffet.
#Tron party with @justinsuntron & @CryptoWendyO
It’s been a fun trip. I’ve got a lot of cool stuff for the channel coming soon. pic.twitter.com/toejAdeOdC
— ₿it₿oy (@Bitboy_Hodl) July 26, 2019
In the statement,Sun apologized for his “immature, naive, and impulsive conducts with my big mouth” turning the planned event “into an out-of-control and failed over-marketing hype and led to a significant series of unexpected consequences.”
Sun bid a record $4.57 million to secure the meeting with Warren Buffet as part of the business magnate’s annual charity lunch auction. After winning the auction, Sun stated that he was looking forward to using the opportunity to educate Buffet on cryptocurrency. Sun had organized for Circle’s Jeremy Allaire, Huobi’s Chris Lee, eToro’s Yoni Assia and Litecoin creator Charlie Lee to also attend the event.
However, in a strange turn of events, the Tron Foundation announced that he would have to reschedule the event due to kidney stones on July 22. The following day, rumors circulated that Sun had received a travel ban and would not be able to leave China due to Tron having engaged in illegal fundraising activities and legal gambling services, as per an article published by 21st Century Business Herald.
Rumored Legal Troubles
On July 24, Sun dispelled the rumored travel ban by streaming a video featuring himself on a San Francisco high-rise building. Sun also refuted the allegations made against him, stating that “The illegal fundraise accusation is wrong. Tron complied with regulators and refunded investors on Sept. 20 in 2017, immediately after the order [of a ban on initial coin offerings] from seven ministries in China.” Sun added that “The Tron foundation is based in Singapore in compliance with local regulations and laws […] and does not involve any flow of capital, or any crypto or fiat currency onramp.”
In his apology letter, Sun stated: “Moving forward, due to my illness, I will take some rest, reduce my publicity on Weibo and media interviews. All the efforts spent on publicity stunt need to go back to technology development.”
A date for the rescheduled meeting between Warren Buffet and Justin Sun has not yet been agreed upon.