Tron Founder’s Winning $4.5 Million Bid Nets Dinner With Warren Buffett

Justin Sun, founder of Tron and CEO of peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent revealed in a tweet that he placed a record-breaking bid of $4.57 million to lunch with crypto-skeptic Warren Buffett as part of the “Oracle of Omaha’s” annual charity auction for the Glide Foundation.

The 28 year-old Sun will meet Buffett at Smith & Wollensky’s in Manhattan and has said he would invite seven crypto-industry leaders to join them.

“I’m a long-term believer (and certainly a big fan) of Buffett and his long-term value investing strategy” wrote Sun in a Medium post.

Before launching Tron in 2017, with an ICO that raised about $70 million, Sun was an early investor in Tesla and bitcoin while obtaining a Master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. A previous venture, Peiwo, saw Sun step into social media with a Vine-like app that connects users through 10-second audio samples.

“As some of you might know, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has said publicly he sees no ‘unique value’ in Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency,” Sun continued, “Yet, he has pointed to the potential in blockchain, the underlying technology behind all cryptocurrency. I look at the upcoming lunch with Buffett as an opportunity to seek mutual understanding and growth.”

Buffett has slammed cryptocurrency in the past — calling it at one point “rat poison squared” — and most recently at his annual shareholder’s meeting saying, wagering on bitcoin is like betting on zero or double-zero on a Las Vegas roulette wheel.

Though in a statement provided by his assistant, Buffett said “I’m delighted with the fact that Justin has won the lunch and am looking forward to meeting him and his friends. We are going to have a good time and Glide will use his contribution to help many thousands of people.”

The billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has hosted this auction since 2000, and has raised over $32 million for the Glide Foundation, which serves the homeless population and those battling addiction in San Francisco.

Last year’s winning bid was $3.3 million.

Image via Coindesk Archives