Remember that time that Justin Sun promised a loyal Tron fan a Tesla Model 3 but wound up awarding it to someone else? It’s not fair to mention that without mentioning that Sun later did give the lucky winner his automobile but only after community pressure led him to cave in.
The Sun & Tron Effect Darkens Hope
Now the Tron-USDT partnership is live and well. Basically, the whole Tron network was expecting a little bit of stablecoin in their wallet.
Tweets from the period tell the story.
Today #USDT is launched on TRON’s blockchain. $USDT is issued by @Tether_to on the #TRON network based on #TRC20 protocol. There will also be a total reward of 20 million $USDT for 100 days. $USDT will be fast, free and smart! #TRX #BTT https://t.co/LteQU04fWN
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) April 17, 2019
This isn’t unreasonable. Sun originally promised $20 million, but as usual with anything great, the devil is in the details. Nope, no one will be receiving $20 straight cash from this deal.
First of all, you’re not getting any USDT unless you already have some.
USDT adoption on Tron has been slow-going, it seems, with just over $100 million of the roughly $2 billion stablecoin’s units circulating on it.
In the 23 days since it started running the program, the Tron Foundation has issued less than $1 million in an “annualized bonuses.” As they report in their own blog:
“As of August 6, the total amount of TRC20-based USDT rewarded in 23 days was 712,478.662307 USDT and a total of 37175 accounts received the reward. According to the USDT price on Bitfinex, the total value of the reward in 23 days was equivalent to $715,027.02537.”
Given the recent scandals surrounding Tether, it seems easy to explain why less than $1 million of the available funds have been distributed so far, according to a report.
Tether is currently available on Bitcoin via Omni layer, Ethereum as an ERC-20 token, and Tron as a TRC-20 token.
Reduced Tether Demand or Reduced Enthusiasm?
Tether Limited’s reserves have been called into question by authorities in New York, which spawned a sequence of events leading to an admission that they may only be around 74% backed by the U.S. dollar.
Ongoing scandals have yet to be resolved surrounding the massive pile of cash invested into Tether by crypto investors since its inception in 2014.
Justin Sun tweeted early Wednesday morning on the subject, using exact figures:
The total amount of #TRC20-based #USDT rewarded was 7,694.054244 and a total of 1738 accounts received the reward. According to the #USDT price on Bitfinex on August 6(PDT), the total value of the reward was equivalent to $7,670.433497. #TRON #TRXhttps://t.co/flTo3CTg1r
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) August 7, 2019
Sun recently praised Chinese socialism and dispelled rumors that he was on the run from Chinese authorities.
He also apologized for being irreverent toward a scientific journal in China which lodged the accusations.
Sun claimed that his low-profile and subsequent cancellation of his hard-won event with Warren Buffett was due to kidney stones, a story widely doubted.