TRON founder Justin Sun’s social media account on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog platform, appears to have been blocked again, along with the accounts of several other cryptocurrency-related interests.
Fast facts
- TRON is a blockchain with a cryptocurrency native to the system founded by Sun in 2017. Sun, 31, has been active on social media, and in 2019 raised his profile when he won a record-setting US$4.6 million bid in a charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffet. In China, Sun is somewhat controversial.
- Weibo appears to have blocked several accounts held by a number of Chinese crypto influencers, including Sun and news blog BeatleNews.
- A message on Sun’s account page states: “This account is now unavailable due to complaints that it violates laws and regulations, as well as provisions of the Weibo Community Convention.”
- In June, Weibo blocked more than 30 influential Chinese cryptocurrency-related accounts amid a series of actions by Beijing against crypto mining and trading.
- The action isn’t new to Sun, whose Weibo accounts have already been blocked at least four times in the past. Neither TRON nor Sun has responded to Forkast.News’s request for comment.
- The official Weibo accounts of three of the country’s major crypto exchanges — Huobi, OKEx, and Binance — were suspended in March. The trio have also been blocked by Baidu, China’s most heavily used search engine, and its peer Sogo, alongside Quora-like Zhihu.