Crypto whiz kid Justin Sun is giving away $1.2 million to 100 people next year - and wants Andrew Yang to help him
- Crypto whiz kid Justin Sun, who paid $4.6 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett, has pledged to give away a total of $1.2 million to 100 people in 2020.
- The Tron and BitTorrent boss plans to invite one of the "lucky 100" to his charity meal with the billionaire investor.
- Sun wants Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang - who has vowed to introduce a universal basic income of $1,000 a month to every American adult if he's elected - to help him select the recipients.
- Here are 6 things to know about Justin Sun.
- Here's everyone Sun has invited to the Buffett lunch.
- Here's a timeline of the Buffett lunch saga.
Crypto whiz kid Justin Sun, who paid $4.6 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett, has pledged to give away a total of $1.2 million to 100 people in 2020. He plans to gift $1,000 a month to each of the "lucky 100" and also invite one of them to his charity meal with the billionaire investor.
The Tron and BitTorrent boss tweeted that he wants Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang to help him select the recipients. Yang vowed last week to give $1,000 a month to 10 people for the next year - a preview of his plan to provide a universal basic income to every American adult if he's elected.
Yang wants to introduce a UBI to offer Americans some protection from automation, which threatens to reshape numerous industries and cause sweeping job losses.
However, he plans to use campaign donations to finance the $120,000 pilot program - a potential violation of campaign finance laws that bar campaigns from giving people anything of value as an incentive to vote, according to the New York Times.
It's also illegal to use campaign funds to cover personal expenses, and recipients of Yang's "freedom dividends" are likely to use them for exactly that purpose, the Times said.
A controversial lunch
Buffett's annual lunch auction raises money for Glide, a San Francisco charity that helps the homeless. Sun won the meal with a record bid of $4.57 million, and vowed to explain the benefits of cryptocurrencies to the Berkshire Hathaway CEO - a notorious crypto skeptic who has called bitcoin "rat poison squared."
Sun, a protégé of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, has invited crypto bosses such as Litecoin creator Charlie Lee and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire to attend the lunch. He also invited Donald Trump after the president tweeted he was "not a fan" of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
However, Sun postponed the lunch at the last minute, citing a bout of kidney stones. The delay sparked conspiracies he was in trouble with the Chinese government, especially after Bloomberg reported Chinese authorities briefly detained Tron employees, and Sun apologized for overhyping the lunch on Chinese social media.
The Buffett lunch is being rescheduled, Tron's communications director recently told Blocktv.