Recently, I saw someone discussing the figure Sun Ge and couldn't help but want to talk about his rise to prominence. Honestly, this story itself is like a textbook—how to achieve social mobility through precise identity packaging and resource accumulation.

From scoring over 20 points in high school physics to 650 points at Peking University, this transformation alone is worth pondering. He leveraged the New Concept Composition Competition as a lever to open the door into the elite circles. Getting into Peking University is not just about studying; more importantly, it grants access to various top-tier resource networks. This step is crucial.

Then, the experience at Southern Weekly is quite interesting. As an intern editor, he cleverly changed his role to that of a credited author and even appeared on the cover of Asia Weekly alongside Jiang Fangzhou. In an era when print media still held influence, this move directly turned him into a "news figure" in the business world. At that time, many entrepreneurs read Southern Weekly, and this exposure was far more valuable than ordinary publicity.

The real turning point was entering Hupan University. This place gathers the top resources in the internet industry—people like Jack Ma, Liu Chuanzhi, and Shi Yuzhu. Sun Ge got in through recommendations from Cai Hongbin and IDG, and after attending a few classes, he transformed into "Jack Ma’s youngest disciple." The power of this label is hard to imagine.

With these endorsements, connecting with blockchain companies like Ripple became natural. He served as the Greater China CEO there, but his true ambition was to create his own project. The emergence of TRON, in a sense, was him directly transplanting the business logic of the internet era into the crypto space.

This is where Sun Ge is most criticized—the operational model of TRON. As the project owner, he controls the vast majority of tokens, and can manipulate the market at will—pumping or dumping. The $300 million cash-out in January 2018 is a perfect example of this logic. In the unregulated crypto world, such power becomes particularly frightening.

Interestingly, Sun Ge at least still maintains the TRON ecosystem. Over 500 DApps, mostly related to gambling, but he hasn't run away directly. In the crypto world, that’s considered "responsible." Many project founders disappear after cashing out, but he continues to generate topics and attract big influencers to bring in newcomers. From a business perspective, this is a highly sophisticated machine.

Ultimately, Sun Ge’s story reflects a phenomenon: how to build trust through identity, endorsements, and resource networks, then monetize that trust in an unregulated environment. This logic works very well in the internet age, and even more so in the crypto space.