In March 2025, Justin Sun appeared on the cover of the English version of Forbes, with the headline Helping the Trump family earn $400 million in crypto billionaires . This is the second Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of the English version of Forbes after Jack Ma, and the fourth exchange head in the world to receive this honor - only Binances Changpeng Zhao (CZ), FTXs Sam Bankman-Freed (SBF) and Coinbases Brian Armstrong have appeared in this position before.
When the cover of Forbes turned from Jack Mas West Lake Sword Conference to Justin Suns crypto evangelism, a metaphor about the generational change of business power is emerging: traditional Internet giants give way to crypto upstarts, and Chinese entrepreneurs transform from followers to rule makers.
Forbes cover code: Who is defining the business benchmark of the new era?
The selection of Forbes cover characters is never accidental. From Bill Gates to Elon Musk, from Jack Ma to Justin Sun, they always follow two iron laws: quantifiable business dominance and irreplaceable rule-defining power.
In the traditional business era, Jack Ma became the first Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of the English version of Forbes with the Alibaba GM V legend and the vision of making it easy to do business anywhere. The logic behind the selection was clear and simple: whoever could represent the explosive growth of the Chinese market would get the spotlight of the world media.
In the crypto era, Forbes’ value coordinates are shifting. When Justin Sun, TRON, and Huobi HTX appeared on the cover, the judges valued not only the transaction volume or number of users, but also the possibility of “technology reshaping the global financial order.”
Sun Yuchens triple advantage: technology, capital and brand power
1. Technical infrastructure: the invisible overlord of the global payment chain
More than half of USDT was issued on TRON because the transaction fees on TRON are much cheaper, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino once commented on TRON in a news interview.
According to the latest data from the TRON chain, its total locked value (TVL) has exceeded 19.7 billion US dollars, the user scale is close to 300 million, the USDT flow exceeds 66.6 billion, and more than 14 million USDT transactions are processed each week, accounting for more than half of the global USDT activities. This means that tens of millions of users are using the payment network built by Justin Sun without any awareness.
2. Business Breakthrough: When Encryption Meets Traditional Power
In 2024, Justin Sun added a new identity, becoming an advisor to the Trump familys cryptocurrency project WLFI (World Liberty Financial), and invested $75 million in WLFI, becoming the largest investor in the project. All these collaborations demonstrate textbook-level political resource monetization: for the first time, cryptocurrency has become a fundraising tool and public opinion platform in the year of the US election.
This proves that crypto assets are no longer geek toys, but strategic weapons that can leverage real power, Forbes wrote in its cover story.
3. Brand building: Huobi HTX’s counter-trend growth
At the darkest moment when FTX’s collapse triggered a crisis of trust in the industry, Huobi HTX, which was taken over by Justin Sun, completed an “extreme transformation”:
● Security card: As of March 2025, proof of more than 100% reserve funds has been issued for 29 consecutive months, promoting the normalization of Security Monthly Report; creating a million-level black address database, an anti-money laundering information database in cooperation with authoritative organizations, thousands of real-time rules and nearly 100 risk models to prevent the inflow of suspicious assets and the loss of user funds;
● Fortune Card: 47 new assets were launched in Q1, covering multiple popular tracks such as Meme, AI, and public chains. The popular token $TRUMP increased by more than 400% in a single day; the first Launchpool event attracted more than 150,000 users to participate;
● Ecological card: The number of users holding HTX DAO governance token $HTX is close to 760,000, and the single-day transaction volume of the TRON ecological trading competition exceeded 14 million US dollars.
According to an industry report released by CoinDesk Data on February 27, Huobi HTX has achieved remarkable results in its global layout, successfully ranked among the top three in the world in terms of Euro stablecoin trading volume, and its competitiveness in the international market continues to increase. At the same time, Huobi HTX was successfully selected as one of the 25 Most Trustworthy Cryptocurrency Exchanges in the World in 2025 by Forbes.
The ecological pattern behind the cover: What kind of business leaders does China need?
In 2015, when Jack Ma appeared on the cover of Forbes, Chinese Internet companies were still trying to prove the rationality of the Copy to China model; today, Justin Sun and others are realizing their global ambitions of Copy from China.
The underlying driving force behind this transformation stems from the secret resonance between the crypto industry and China’s business genes:
● Technological applicationism: Compared with the West’s obsession with “decentralized fundamentalism”, Justin Sun is better at embedding blockchain technology into real needs. Whether it is the compliance cooperation between TRON Chain and Huawei Cloud, or Huobi HTX’s “strict selection of listing” strategy, they all demonstrate the typical Chinese pragmatic philosophy.
● Large-scale operations: From TRON’s launch of a $10 million Meme ecosystem incentive plan to HTX DAO’s innovative decentralized governance model, Justin Sun is well aware of the Web 3.0 concept of “community is the core and users are the cornerstone”.
● Policy game wisdom: When US exchanges were shrinking their fronts due to regulatory pressure, Justin Sun established a base in the Eurasian market by taking actions such as being elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Liberland and applying for compliance licenses in multiple countries.
When Justin Sun appeared on the cover of Forbes Global, he was only 35 years old, and everything had just begun. As a young leader in the crypto industry, he represents not only the vast development potential of the crypto field, but also the curiosity and expectations of mainstream society about crypto. Justin Sun once said in a live broadcast, We can prove to the outside world that the crypto industry can represent the image and interests of Chinese people internationally. He proved that Chinese entrepreneurs can still have the right to speak in the industry without relying on the local market.
When the cover becomes a new starting point: The Encoder of New Rules
The real significance of the Forbes cover may be that it unveils a new script for the globalization of Chinese entrepreneurs:
● Jack Ma era: Relying on the local market dividend to export the Made in China business model to the world;
● The Justin Sun era: Bypassing geopolitical barriers and using encryption technology to build a business empire “born in globalization and grown in globalization”.
Sun Yuchens challenge has just begun - he needs to prove that the crypto empire is not a short-lived capital game, but a next-generation infrastructure that is comparable to Alibaba and Tencent. As Sun Yuchen said in the live broadcast, This is indeed a milestone, but it is only the beginning.
At this moment, we may be witnessing history: as the entrepreneurial legend on the West Lake gradually fades away, a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs has written the prologue of a new order on the other side of the ocean.
