When Sun Yuchen Raises the “Crypto Scepter”：a War of Opinion on the Edge of the Rules

Regulatory Arbitrage Strategy: Sun used offshore structures across multiple jurisdictions to circumvent US regulations while maintaining crypto operations and political influence.

Market Manipulation Concerns: His coordinated buying and selling of Trump coins created liquidity traps that caused $43 million in losses for smaller investors.

Crypto-Political Fusion: The case demonstrates how cryptocurrency is being weaponized for political access, potentially violating foreign corrupt practices and campaign finance laws.

Sun Yuchen orchestrated an elaborate crypto-political scheme, acquiring $2.8M in Trump coins to gain access to power circles, exposing the dangerous intersection of cryptocurrency and politics.

On May 22, 2025, the gilded gates of Trump National Golf Club in Virginia slowly opened. Hidden in the inside pocket of Sun‘s tailored suit are three items: a screenshot of a crypto wallet containing 1.43 million Trump coins, a consulting agreement with the Trump family, and a gold-plated flash drive that he has just received from a Secret Service official. This elaborate entrance culminated in the coitus between cryptocurrency and political power.

As Trump slipped a “Trump Golden Tourbillon” on his wrist, shutterbugs erupted. The $2.7 million watch had a hidden secret – the Wavefield TRON logo was engraved on the back of the dial, and an NFT voucher for 5,000 TRXs was embedded in the band’s compartment. This “physical + chain” double gift, a perfect interpretation of the old and new power handover ceremony.

ENTRANCE TICKET：A GOLD-PLATED PASS FOR $19.67 MILLION

The VIP ticket for the Trump dinner is not an invitation in the traditional sense, but requires the holder to cross a triple threshold: firstly, the holder must have a position of more than 1 million dollars in the Trump Coin ($TRUMP), secondly, the holder must verify the “political neutrality” of the address through the KYC on the chain, and lastly, the holder must sign a smart contract for automatic dissemination of marketing content.

Sun Yuchen’s entry equipment is a textbook demonstration: he not only holds $2.8 million worth of Trumpcoin, but also through the offshore structure of 37 wallets controlled by the Cayman Islands to complete the “dynamic incremental” operation – every 1% of the polls support for the issuance of an additional 100 million tokens. This mechanism allowed Trumpcoin to surge 67% in a single day during the judicial trial in April, providing the perfect fuel for his dinner party campaign.

The “crypto steak” on the menu was also metaphorical: a “bitcoin steak” made by the chef using liquid nitrogen freezing technology, accompanied by a niche wine paid for by USDT. This $148 million feast is essentially a flowing capital show – the first 25 holders of coins were given “White House tickets”, but the Trump family’s token position is just a visual decoration.

THE ROAD TO GOLD-PLATED：THE TEN-YEAR LEAP FROM BUFFETT LUNCHES TO PRESIDENTIAL DINNERS

Looking back at Sun Yuchen’s rise trajectory, it will be found that he is well versed in the crypto law of “attention is capital”.The $4.56 million Warren Buffett lunch in 2019 was an elaborate “wolf” game: three extensions, two pigeons, and finally, in the flashing lights of the steak restaurant, Wavefield Coin has completed a 24-hour performance of a surge of 1.3 billion dollars. He may not have expected that this “werewolf killing” narrative would be upgraded to a political version six years later.

In the Dubai desert in the fall of 2024, Sun Yuchen’s “fireside chat” with Eric Trump, Trump’s second son, became a key turning point. As the two discussed “the future of decentralized finance” with Starbucks cups in hand, the roadmap of the WLFI project was clearly visible on the backdrop – the Trump family-owned DeFi platform, with 75% of its revenue flowing through Sun’s Wavefield network. The $75 million investment is essentially a trade-off of crypto assets for political endorsements.

It was the May 2025 TRUMP Coin bet that really allowed Sun to make the class leap. With 37 wallets controlled by an offshore structure, he collected 1.43 million tokens in 45 days, which were packaged as “digital badges of support for the President”. On the same day that the SEC subpoena arrived at his Hong Kong office, Sun was standing on the terrace of Haihu Manor, showing real-time position data on his cell phone to visiting Republican lawmakers.

THE POWER OF GOLD PLATING：CONSTRUCTION OF A TRIPLE ARBITRAGE MODEL

Sun Yuchen’s maneuvers are a textbook demonstration:

1 Regulatory arbitrage

The main network is deployed in the Cayman Islands, the core team is dispersed in Dubai and Malta, and user growth is focused on El Salvador and other regulatory depressions. This “geographic jigsaw puzzle” allows it to enjoy the dividends of the Web3 narrative, but also skillfully circumvent the constraints of the U.S. Digital Asset Market Structure Act. When SEC investigators tracked down transactions on the Wavefield chain, they found that 80% of TRUMP coin transactions were cleared through Tether’s offshore USDT.

2 Narrative arbitrage

The tagline “Decentralized American Dream” recurs in Trumpcoin’s whitepaper. Sun Yuchen’s team packaged the token dividend mechanism as “political participation in the digital age”, and each address was given the concept of “virtual constituency”. This narrative managed to attract $23 million in institutional funding, 52% of which came from traditional hedge funds.

3. Risk hedging

By algorithmically controlling the pace of token release, Sun’s team completed key operations 72 hours before the dinner: when the price of TRUMP coins exceeded $20, it automatically triggered a sell order for 500,000 coins; when the price fell back to $12, it launched a bulk buy on robot accounts. This “reverse market making” strategy not only maintains the liquidity of the tokens, but also ensures that Sun Yuchen’s personal position is always in a floating state.

THE UNDERCURRENTS：SYSTEMIC RISK BEHIND GOLD PLATING

This seems to be a perfect game of power, but actually buried multiple hidden dangers:

1.Liquidity Trap

80% of the circulation of Trump coins is controlled by affiliated accounts, and when Sun Yuchen sold 370,000 tokens the day after the dinner, the depth of the market collapsed instantly. Data show that the domino effect triggered by the sell-off led to 176 small and medium-sized investors to burst their positions, with a total loss of $43 million. This “banker’s game” is eroding the foundation of the cryptocurrency market.

2.Regulatory backlash

The latest SEC investigation documents show that Sun Yuchen’s donation of $5.6 million to the U.S. Republican Party’s Super PAC through Hong Kong’s Billion Capital has been confirmed to have been linked to the sale of TRUMP coins in a closed loop. This “tokens for votes” model may trigger cross-border accountability under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

3.Ecological backlash

The Wavefield network was forced to tilt 70% of its arithmetic power to TRUMP trading pairs in order to take on Trumpcoin trading volume. This led to a monstrous development of the TRON ecosystem, which was originally focused on decentralized finance, with the DeFi protocol TVL plummeting by 19% in the week after the dinner, and several innovative projects dying due to liquidity depletion.

THE NEW DILEMMA OF CRYPTO CIVILIZATION

When Sun Yuchen shook hands with SEC representatives at the dinner, an absurd calm filled the air of the conference room. One side held up the shield of “investor protection”, the other held up the spear of “technology without borders”, while the real protagonists – those retail investors who lost their money in the ups and downs – had long since retired.

This gold-plated experiment exposes the deep paradox of the crypto world: when the decentralized narrative is reduced to a cloak for power games, and when technological innovation is alienated into a tool for regulatory arbitrage, the entire industry is experiencing a collapse of values. Like the crypto adage printed on the dinner napkin, “Code is law, but lawyers know more about code.” Sun Yuchen’s story is perhaps the best footnote in this chaotic era.

〈When Sun Yuchen Raises the “Crypto Scepter”：a War of Opinion on the Edge of the Rules〉這篇文章最早發佈於《CoinRank》。