Author: 0xDanny
Editor: Vivi
Following Binance’s $4.3 billion hemorrhage and founder CZ pleading guilty and stepping down, the outside world joked that the pressure is now on HuobiHTX and Justin Sun !
On Tuesday afternoon, U.S. time, Binance founder and CEO CZ CZ left the federal court in Seattle after pleading guilty. According to the latest plea agreement, the prison term is expected to be no more than 18 months, and sentencing will be postponed for six months.
On the day the incident occurred, TRX founder Justin Sun immediately sent greetings to CZ: CZ will push the industry to unprecedented heights!
Justin Sun forwarded CZ’s resignation statement on social media platforms and said, CZ, I have known you for nearly ten years, and during this time you have played a leadership role in the community, the industry, and for me. Over the past six years, you founded Binance and pushed the entire industry to unprecedented heights.
This short article may be a moment of sympathy for builders in the industry when they face difficulties!
However, many netizens have expressed concerns about its future, and some trolls have brought out a classic photo for everyone to review. The end of the crypto world is prison. Maybe Justin Sun is next? !
Justin Sun was sued by the SEC and received a summons from the US court!
On March 22, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced charges against Justin Sun and his three wholly-owned companies, Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd. and Rainberry Inc. (formerly BitTorrent), accusing them of providing and selling crypto asset securities without registration. Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT).
According to the complaint, these unregistered offers and sales violated Section 5 of the Securities Act.
The SEC also accused Justin Sun of orchestrating a scheme to artificially inflate the apparent trading volume of TRX in the secondary market, violating the anti-fraud and market manipulation provisions of the federal securities laws. According to the SEC's complaint, what really drives the prices of TRX and BTT are "fake transactions", that is, the market is trying to increase the price of the currency. In response, Justin Sun responded that the US SEC’s accusations lacked basis.
At the same time, 8 celebrities were accused by the SEC of illegally selling TRX and/or BTT, and 6 of them paid a fine of US$400,000 to settle the charges.
Immediately afterwards on April 13, Justin Sun received a summons from a court in the Southern District of New York in the United States. The summons detailed that Justin Sun was suspected of "selling illegal securities, defrauding and manipulating the market, and wash transactions (similar to pumping and dumping)." Prosecution. Currently, the case is pending further review.
Justin Sun has been stripped of his Grenada diplomat status
According to Grenada Broadcasting Network (GBN), Justin Justin Sun was stripped of his ambassadorial status at some point after the election in June 2022, when the New National Party that awarded Justin Sun the position was dismissed by the National Democratic Congress.
All ambassadors were recalled at some point in the "early months" of the nine-month-old NDC government. The account associated with Justin Justin Sun, Grenada’s permanent resident at the WTO, has not been updated since June 13, 2022.
Later, Justin Sun posted on Twitter that his term as Grenada’s ambassador to the WTO will end on March 31, 2023. Next, I will focus on the smooth handover of my responsibilities to my successor and take a short rest. He will continue his career as a public servant and will focus on the field of digital economy and cryptocurrency regulation.
It is reported that Justin Sun donated funds to water conservancy projects and was appointed Grenada's ambassador to the WTO in December 2021. The Grenada government at the time expressed its hope that he would use his connections to promote the country's trade, investment and development opportunities.
According to WTO rules, diplomatic immunity is granted by the host country government (Switzerland, where the WTO headquarters is located) to the diplomatic representatives of the sending country (Grenada). In this case, Switzerland granted Justin Sun diplomatic immunity (only applicable to Swiss territory).
Today, Justin Sun has lost the diplomatic immunity granted by Grenada to the WTO ambassador. Grenada has a strict extradition policy against the US government. If the US SEC's previous charges against him develop to a criminal level, it is expected that he will not be able to escape jail.
Justin Sun’s group has been repeatedly attacked by hackers
In recent months, Justin Sun's groups including HTX (formerly Huobi), Poloniex exchange, and iToken (formerly Huobi wallet) have been attacked by hackers many times, resulting in huge losses. This article summarizes them as follows.
On September 2, a former Huobi employee set up a Trojan horse on iToken (formerly Huobi Wallet) to steal user seed phrase or private keys, resulting in the theft of funds from at least 5 accounts, equivalent to approximately US$1.39 million.
On September 25, HTX consultant and Tron founder Justin Sun said, HTX (formerly Huobi) has been hacked, resulting in a total loss of 5,000 ETH, worth approximately $8 million. On October 8, Huobi stated that it had recovered the funds.
On October 3, a user once again reported that all 273,000 USDT in the iToken wallet (formerly Huobi Wallet) he used was transferred out and was suspected of being stolen.
On November 10, Justin Sun’s Poloniex exchange had $114 million in assets stolen , of which $49 million came from the TRON network. The hackers may come from a North Korean hacker group and recovery will be very difficult.
On November 23, Huobi Chain’s cross-chain bridges Heco Bridge and HTX (formerly Huobi) suffered hacker attacks. Heco Bridge’s assets worth a total of US$86.6 million were transferred, and HTX had a suspicious transfer of US$23.4 million, according to Cyvers Alerts. , HTX suffered losses of approximately $12.4 million.
Justin Sun announced the overall profitability of all his companies on October 26: "The actual revenue in the third quarter was US$202 million, expenses were US$104 million, and profit was US$98 million, an increase of 14% from the previous quarter."
According to the third quarter financial report released by HTX in October, its operating income in the third quarter was US$24.75 million, which was far from the amount stolen. The sum of the two stolen amounts also exceeded its group’s third quarter business income, which was approximately equal to that of Justin Sun’s The group made a profit for the first half of the year.
Justin Sun said that the losses caused to users will be fully compensated. However, its companies have been stolen many times and have become cash machines for hackers. In addition, Justin Sun’s case with US regulatory agencies has not yet been resolved. The reasons for this have made the market full of speculation! The storm is coming and the wind is blowing all over the building, and there seems to be a sense that the building is about to collapse!
BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes, FTX founder SBF, LUNA founder DK, Thodex founder Faruk, Three Arrows Capital founder Zhu Su, Binance founder CZ... have been sentenced/imprisoned one after another. Will Justin Sun be the next one? I’m afraid no one can tell clearly!
According to the timeline, after the FTX incident, the United States publicly investigated Binance’s money laundering for Iran and Russia, and then prosecuted CZ and Binance, and soon after sued Justin Justin Sun Now the U.S. Department of Justice and Binance reached a settlement, CZ pleaded guilty and stepped down, and Justin Sun became the next It is possible for a person to be sanctioned.
Or Justin Sun can refer to Binance’s settlement experience. CZ paid a large sum of money and pleaded guilty to a minor crime. He is expected to be sentenced for no more than 18 months. There is no felony. It can be regarded as a relatively small punishment within the legal framework of the American judicial system. , and more importantly, Binance has since moved towards global compliance, opening up the road to future development!
In short, Binance’s settlement has made a start. Even with decentralized operations and distributed offices, strong sanctions still cannot be avoided!
PS This article does not constitute investment advice!
