Winning bidder of Warren Buffett’s private lunch revealed as Tron CEO Justin Sun
Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun was revealed as the person who placed the record-breaking bid of $4,567,888 to have a private lunch with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.
Sun, the 28-year-old who founded the cryptocurrency platform Tron, tweeted about his winning bid and said he will invite leaders in blockchain — technology used to verify and record bitcoin or cryptocurrency transactions — to meet Buffett. As part of the auction, the winning bidder can bring up to seven friends to go to lunch with Buffett at Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York City.
“I officially announce I’ve won the record-setting 20th-anniversary charity lunch hosted by @WarrenBuffett. I’ll also invite #blockchain industry leaders to meet with a titan of investment. I hope this benefits everyone. #TRON #TRX #BTT #BitTorrent,” Sun tweeted Monday.
Sun won the bidding war over the weekend by placing the $4,567,888 figure that surpassed last year’s amount of $3.3 million. The auction, which began in 2000, has raised almost $30 million for the Glide Foundation, which helps the homeless in San Francisco, The Wall Street Journal reported. Buffett began working with Glide through his wife, Susan, who died in 2004, when she volunteered at the charity.
The billionaire has repeatedly slammed cryptocurrency, even saying bitcoin has “no unique value at all” in a February interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“It attracts charlatans,” Buffett said. “If you do something phony by going out and selling yo-yos or something, there’s no money in it — but when you get into Wall Street, there’s huge money.”
He also previously called bitcoin “probably rat poison squared,” a “mirage” and “not a currency.”
Luckily for Sun, Buffett did tell CNBC that blockchain has potential. The Chinese entrepreneur said in a news release Monday that he was looking forward to talking to Buffett about blockchain.
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"I'm looking forward to meeting a true pioneer in investing," Sun said. "I'm excited to talk to Warren Buffett about the promise of blockchain and to get valuable tips and insights from him about entrepreneurship and making bold bets on the future."
Sun founded the app Peiwo, dubbed China’s Snapchat, before starting Tron.
Fox Business' Kathleen Joyce contributed to this report.