I made fun of Justin Sun eating a banana. RIP.
My friends thought it was funny. Tron did not.
By Callan Quinn.
At the end of November last year, Tron founder and inveterate attention-seeker Justin Sun bought a $6.2 million banana that was part of a modern art piece called Comedian. The purchase attracted a great deal of attention, spurred on even more when he announced he planned to eat the banana at a specially organised event in Hong Kong.
Sun is known for these sorts of gimmicks. He’s paid millions for lunch with Warren Buffett, commissioned a theme song for Tron from Hans Zimmer and has somehow obtained political office as a former Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization. Currently, he’s the prime minister of micronation Liberland.
As a Hong Kong-based journalist for CoinDesk, the crypto industry’s largest trade media outlet, I duly attended this latest display one Friday and wrote up a slightly tongue-in-cheek article about what was, essentially, a man eating an overpriced piece of fruit.
I was happy with the piece. My editors were happy with the piece. My friends thought it was funny. I moved on to other stories.
Bananagate
The following Monday I was frankly surprised and a little offended that I had not received a customary whinging email from Tron. Its PR and legal teams like to issue rambling, borderline unhinged complaints to any news outlet which dares allege Sun is anything other than the second coming of Christ. I wondered if they were going soft.
But by Tuesday morning Hong Kong time a complaint had indeed arrived. Tron’s PR team demanded a retraction of the article as it risked tarnishing Sun’s reputation. One wonders how his PR people deal with the uncomfortable issue that the person who does the most damage to Sun’s reputation is, in fact, Sun himself.
However, what prevented this complaint from being consigned to the trash heap where it belonged was that Tron also complained to CoinDesk’s parent company Bullish, which purchased the news outlet in November 2023.
One might have expected Bullish to simply say they had no impact on editorial decisions at CoinDesk. Instead, Bullish took Tron’s side and forced CoinDesk’s leadership to remove my article from the website.
For everyone at CoinDesk, this was a shock. The outlet’s own website assures readers “neither Bullish nor any of its executives has any involvement in editorial or content decisions”.
Awkwardly, it still says that.
The editorial team at CoinDesk tried to push back, holding a meeting with Bullish CEO Tom Farley and CoinDesk CEO Sara Stratoberdha. CoinDesk’s team relayed their concerns about editorial integrity and asked for the piece to be put back up, as well as some measures to ensure this didn’t happen again. The meeting lasted several hours but made little progress.
The fight culminated several days later in an announcement that CoinDesk’s three most senior editors, Kevin Reynolds, Nick Baker and Marc Hochstein, were being let go. An email from Stratoberdha, each copy watermarked with the name of the recipient lest they be leaked (it was anyway), said that the decision had been in the works for some time and was not related to the banana controversy.
I could not even begin to speculate why Bullish felt the need to kowtow to His Excellency in the first place. And even if I had a few thoughts on Bullish, as per my employment contract – which for some reason is with Bullish, not CoinDesk – I’m not allowed to say anything bad about them at any time “during or after my employment”, whether “orally, in writing or graphic form, or through any electronic medium”.
How this means that reporters at CoinDesk can “cover the parent company and its affiliates and investments without fear or favour” is not entirely apparent.
But for the record and because I’m not allowed to say otherwise, I think Bullish is awesome.
On a totally unrelated topic, Sun sure does sponsor a lot of crypto events. You can usually tell which ones as he has a fondness for displaying blown up pictures of his own face at the entrance. Tron is a major sponsor for Consensus, also owned by Bullish, which is coming up in Hong Kong next month.
I’ve worked as a journalist since I was in my late teens. I’ve never once had an article pulled or retracted, especially in this manner. As far as I am aware, nobody has found any factual errors in the piece. My only mistake seems to be that I treated the event with the level of respect it deserved. As a result, upon returning from holiday last week, I submitted my resignation to CoinDesk.
Some of the best news stories I’ve ever read, and some of the pieces I’m proudest of writing, have originated from people who saw things that weren’t right and spoke out against them. I can’t expect other people to tell me their stories if I don’t do the same.
I’ll leave for readers to decide for themselves whether the article, reprinted below, should have been deleted. But I will warn you: if you were expecting an explosive exposé or a vitriolic diatribe against Justin Sun, you will be sorely disappointed.
Justin Sun walked into the room flanked by his usual entourage of bodyguards and advisers and made his way to the stage. Behind him, a banana was duct taped in position on a white wall. On either side, two blank-faced men in white shirts and black aprons stared into the sea of cameras and smartphones. I wondered what they were thinking.
As for what I was thinking, it was something along the lines of how ridiculous this all was. To give some background, on Nov. 21 Tron founder Justin Sun paid a whopping $6.2 million — including $1 million in commission — at an auction at Sotheby’s in New York for an artwork called Comedian. The work, created by modern artist Maurizio Cattelan in 2019, is the aforementioned banana duct taped to the wall.
The reaction among many observers was the typical one seen whenever anyone spends a large sum of money on modern art: bewilderment, a bit of disgust, an eye roll. I think people who don’t like art can still appreciate the skill that goes into paintings or sculptures. If works like Comedian or Unmade Bed have any artistic merit, I cannot comprehend it. Tron’s public relations team assured me art is subjective.
But it’s memecoin season and things with absolutely no intrinsic value are very in right now. So it was hardly surprising that shortly after buying the banana-and-duct-tape combo, Sun said he planned to eat it.
This has happened twice before: Once in 2019, when a performance artist took it from the Art Basel in Miami shortly after it was sold for $120,000. Then again by a South Korean art student at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul in 2023.
It doesn’t affect the artwork. The banana and duct tape are replaced regularly anyway.
The consumption took place at the 5-star Peninsula Hotel in the Tsim Sha Tsui area of Hong Kong on Friday, a stone’s throw from some of the city’s most notorious doss houses.
The crowd consisted of a mix of journalists and people from the art and crypto industries, Tron and Sotheby’s employees and so-called key opinion leaders (KOLs). I mean the sort of people who wear clothes that look like they came from the local market, but probably cost thousands of dollars — U.S. dollars, not Hong Kong. One fellow journalist had flown all the way from Shanghai just for the event. Around us in the foyer, servers in white suit jackets served wine and other refreshments.
An information board near the entrance said Sun sought to immerse himself in the performance art of Cattelan, with Comedian as his muse. “He envisions this iconic piece as a catalyst for sparking dialogues and exchanges,” the text read.
Other people I spoke to in attendance were more skeptical, characterising the event as little more than a marketing gimmick.
It’s not the first time Sun has courted the limelight. In 2019, he paid $4.57 million at a charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffett. In April this year, he commissioned a theme song for Tron written by legendary movie composer Hans Zimmer.
He also served as Grenada's permanent representative to the World Trade Organization and, more recently, became prime minister of the libertarian micronation Liberland, which is located in a floodplain on the Croatian side of the Danube.
Sun has also made the headlines in far less whimsical ways. Last year the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged him with fraud and other securities law violations, including “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading.” Sun responded on X that the suit was without merit.
Meanwhile, his lawyers have threatened media outlets with legal action when they report on Tron’s use by terrorist groups.
Perhaps the hope was that the banana would bring everyone together and let them forget about this. Indeed, Sun seems to believe the banana is the start of some sort of mass movement. “Is it simply a banana or something belonging to all of us?” he asked at one point.
He compared the process of replacing the banana every few days to the changing Chinese dynasties over the millennia. He praised the banana for how much traffic and attention it had brought himself and Tron. He noted that the banana’s value went beyond the limits of money.
Then he ate it.
November in Hong Kong seems to just be the prime season for odd crypto events. Fortunately, unlike ApeFest last November, this time nobody was hospitalised. Instead, upon leaving attendees received a replica of Comedian along with a roll of duct tape and a spare banana.
At least that’s my breakfast tomorrow sorted.
All in all, I had hoped if I was going to be censored and ultimately have to quit my job that it would be for something more substantial and grandiose like discovering Atlantis or proving the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. But there we go.
For what it’s worth, I hate the damage all of this has done to the CoinDesk newsroom. I only worked there three months and part of why I took the job was the opportunity to work with some of the best reporters covering crypto. Decisions made by management at Bullishh should not reflect on the abilities or integrity of CoinDesk reporters.
I think my mum summed it up best during one of my rants to her over Whatsapp. “This Sun guy must be a very sensitive soul. Honestly, it’s pathetic,” she told me.
“It’s a banana for God’s sake.”
Hi, it’s Callan. With Scamurai, I’m trying to build a news site that focuses on investigations into scams, fraud and consumer rights in tech.
I publish stories on the site throughout the week, plus a newsletter that goes out every Monday afternoon Hong Kong time straight to your inbox.
Got a story or want to chat? Get in touch via email at callan@scamurai.io. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
(Tron PR team, you can also send your complaint there, but I shan’t be removing this piece or apologising.)
Awesome piece. Bullish is an abomination.
thank you for sharing this and respect for doing the right thing .... looking forward to reading more of your reporting!