Justin Sun, the New Sheriff in Town on the Steem Blockchain

About a week ago, the news broke that Justin Sun, the CEO of the TRON foundation, had bought Steemit from Ned Scott, taking over the reins of affairs of Steemit Inc - the private American company which created the Steem blockchain.

Sun, who goes by the username @Justinsunsteemit on Steemit, was also reported to now control the entire stake previously owned by Steemit Inc which is estimated at about 70 million Steem. This roughly constitutes over 15% of the entire Steem in circulation.

With this massive stake, @Justinsunsteemit becomes the single most influential person on the Steem blockchain. This article examines the background of Sun and speculates on the future of Steemit and Steem.

Who is Justin Sun?

The name Justin Sun arguably needs no introduction in the cryptospace. Sun is the CEO of the TRON foundation, the company credited for developing the TRON blockchain in 2017 after raising about $70 million through an ICO before it was outlawed by the Chinese government.

Apart from his involvement with TRON, Sun is also the CEO of BitTorrent, a company responsible for the development of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol which is used for transferring large files over the internet.

According to information available on Wikipedia, Sun received his education at the University of Pennsylvania and Peking University, where he studied East Asia Studies and History respectively.

Justin Sun, the Young Business Genius

Named by Forbes magazine as one of the Chinese under 30 entrepreneurs to watch out for between 2015 and 2017, Sun has lived up to expectations in building his wealth and business bridges. Apart from founding the TRON blockchain and acquiring BitTorrent, Sun has succeeded in striking one of the most formidable deals in the blockchain industry.

In a report published by Forbes earlier this year, Sun was said to have struck a deal with Samsung, the Asian technology giant. The deal would see Samsung partnering with TRON to push the adoption of decentralized applications on top of the TRON blockchain by integrating dapps in the forthcoming Samsung S10 smartphone series.

Similarly, Sun was reported to have paid $4.3m dollars to have a dinner with Warren Buffet, an American billionaire, investor, and Bitcoin skeptic. Not much details about the discussions Sun had with Buffet during the lush dinner was made available to the public, however discerning minds would suspect key business interests.

Steemit and Steem Under the New Sheriff in Town

Being the new CEO of Steemit Inc and the largest stakeholder on the Steem blockchain, it is no exaggeration to state that the decisions of Sun would have significant impact on Steemit and the future of Steem.

Ultimately, the aim of @Justinsunsteemit is to move Steemit to TRON, of course, without disrupting the Steem architecture on which Steemit was built and in which he now owns the highest stake. This means that Sun will have to figure out a way to move Steemit to TRON and still make the Steem token valuable, while retaining the Steem userbase. This is most likely the case because as with the other acquisitions he had had in the past, Sun does not tamper with the existing structural foundation.

It is not unreasonable to predict that when Sun succeeds in moving Steemit to TRON, it is very likely that Steemit, due to the aforementioned partnership which Sun had with Samsung, will have a default presence on the Samsung smart phones of the future. If this happens, Steemit will have become one of the earliest dapps to gain mass adoption since Samsung controls roughly 1/5 of the global mobile phone market.

As for the Steem token, one can safely predict that as long as it remains the token used by Steemit and other valuable Dapps, its value is bound to increase as adoption grows. However, a token swap could have a significant impact on the Steem market cap and its prices. Ultimately, only time will tell what direction the pendulum will swing.