The crypto whiz kid who bailed on a $4.6 million lunch with Warren Buffett is being accused of stiffing BitTorrent's founder
- Justin Sun, who bailed on a $4.6 million lunch with Warren Buffett this week, has been accused of stiffing the founder of BitTorrent, a file-sharing service he acquired for a reported $126 million last summer.
- "Anybody know if Justin Sun is hard up for cash?" BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen tweeted. "He isn't letting the last payment for BitTorrent get out of escrow."
- Sun attended the Tron Influencer Party to celebrate the one-year acquisition of the BitTorrent deal on Thursday, the day he was originally scheduled to meet Buffett.
- Here are six things to know about Justin Sun, a protégé of Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
- View Markets Insider's homepage for more stories.
The crypto whiz kid who bailed on a $4.6 million lunch with Warren Buffett has been accused of stiffing the founder of BitTorrent, a file-sharing service he acquired for a reported $126 million last summer.
Justin Sun, now CEO of BitTorrent and the Tron cryptocurrency platform, postponed the charity meal with Berkshire Hathaway's billionaire chairman scheduled for Thursday, blaming a bout of kidney stones. However, he rallied to attend the Tron Influencer Party and celebrate the one-year anniversary of the BitTorrent deal. Bram Cohen, BitTorrent's creator and CEO of bitcoin-rival Chia, clearly wasn't pleased.
"Anybody know if Justin Sun is hard up for cash?" Cohen tweeted. "He isn't letting the last payment for BitTorrent get out of escrow."
Tron's head of business development, Ron Liu, replied that the funds in escrow are "not considered Justin's cash" and Sun had signed the release agreement. Cohen countered by asking why the release wasn't signed two months ago as scheduled, and suggested Tron was trying to reclaim the funds.
"I don't have the fucking money and the escrow agency says they haven't gotten signoff," Cohen told another user.
Cohen's claims come after Caixin reported Sun delayed his lunch with Buffett because he was being held by the Chinese government over a laundry list of allegations including illegal fundraising, money laundering, and gambling. Sun denied the claims and broadcast a live video showing he was in San Francisco.
However, several Tron executives were briefly detained by Chinese authorities then released after Sun delayed the lunch, according to Bloomberg. Sun also took to Chinese social-media website Weibo to apologize for his "big mouth" and efforts to hype the Buffett lunch, revealed he was being scrutinized by regulators, and pledged to put his country first and retreat from the public eye.
Partying with influencers and fending off accusations on Twitter has done little to lower Sun's profile so far.
