What is interesting about Justin Sun is not how many things he has done, but that he can always make everything eventually become “something Justin Sun has done.”

Some people start businesses to build companies; some invest to make money; some appear in the news because something happened. Justin Sun is different. When he does these things, he seems to also have to complete a more important task along the way: making sure everyone knows that he did it.

That is certainly not a sin.

In this era, being unknown is sometimes worse than failure. If you fail, at least someone knows you failed; if you succeed but no one knows, the business world may not even bother applauding you.

So Justin Sun understood early on something that many people still have not understood by the age of forty: a person’s value and visibility are not the same thing, but the latter often determines whether the former gets a chance to be discussed.

Some people think this is marketing.

Of course it is marketing.

The question is, how many things in modern society are not marketing?

Universities market their rankings, companies market their visions, cities market their happiness indexes, and ordinary people market their weekends on social media. The difference is that most people market themselves for a lifetime and still have few people willing to watch.

Justin Sun’s talent is knowing how to make people watch.

As for whether they like or hate what they see afterward, he does not seem to care that much. Because in the attention market, liking and hating sometimes use the same currency.

That is probably also what makes him smartest and, at the same time, most uncomfortable for others.

Traditionally successful people usually want others to respect them. Justin Sun seems more realistic: respect is certainly nice, but controversy is fine too, and doubt is fine too. If the abuse is loud enough, that works as well.

The thing he fears most is that no one says anything.

So when evaluating Justin Sun, if you only ask whether he is a successful businessman, the question is actually quite simple. The more worthwhile question is whether he is a person who does business, or someone who has turned himself into a business.

I lean toward the latter.

And that may be the most accurate form of success in this era.