Billionaire’s $6.3m ‘bride price’ stunt could backfire

After all, we don’t need to look far to see how Beijing feels about flashy displays of wealth. In 2022, regulators asked the entire brokerage industry to implement pay cuts after the wife of a junior trader at China International Capital Corp. drew public ire by revealing her husband’s monthly salary on social media. Finance executives’ compensation only started to bottom out last year.
China more recently has been cracking down on capital flight, banning unauthorised offshore issuance of yuan-pegged stablecoins. These cryptocurrencies allow people to move money internationally without sharing identifying information, even bypassing stringent economic sanctions.
It’s not hard to see how Sun may irritate Beijing. The bulk of his wealth stems from Tron, a blockchain system that has morphed into a global payments network that moves much more than PayPal. Nearly 40 per cent of Tether’s USDT, the world’s most-used dollar-pegged stablecoin, is transacted on Tron, which counted Asian crime syndicates among its early adopters, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Meanwhile, crypto exchange HTX, where Sun is a self-described advisor, hosts plenty of suspicious activities. It has been accused by the UK and the European Union of helping Russia move money. HTX has pushed back, saying Huobi Global SA — the first defendant in a legal claim the UK has made — is distinct from the online exchange, which is committed to full compliance worldwide.