Key Takeaways
- Justin Sun announced the launch of a new decentralized perpetual futures exchange at TOKEN2049.
- The new platform is branded as SunPerp in English and Sun Wukong in Chinese.
- The direct pitch to Chinese users stands in defiance of Beijing’s crypto ban.
Four years after China banned the trading and mining of digital assets, crypto activity in the country shows no sign of slowing down, often thanks to platforms owned or influenced by Justin Sun.
In his latest pitch to Chinese users, Sun used a keynote address at TOKEN2049 to launch a new decentralized exchange (DEX) brand, “Sun Wukong,” in bold defiance of Beijing’s crypto ban.
How Justin Sun Supports Chinese Crypto Trading
Before China’s crypto ban in 2021, Sun was already a central figure for Chinese traders due to his ties to HTX.
Pre-ban, HTX (then Huobi) held a 22% share of centralized exchange volume, but this plummeted to around 4% in 2022, suggesting that Chinese users accounted for a large chunk of its customer base.
Officially, HTX exited mainland China in the wake of Beijing’s prohibition, and no longer accepts customers in the country. The same goes for Poloniex, another crypto exchange connected to Sun.
Nonetheless, both HTX and the Tron blockchain, which Sun founded in 2017, remain closely associated with the Chinese market.
In 2023, Messari reported that around 20% of Tron nodes were located in China, the highest concentration of any country. Meanwhile, although hard to prove conclusively, there are good reasons to suspect that a significant share of USDT activity, which mostly occurs on Tron, originates from Chinese users
As Arthur Hayes once stated, USDT has long been “the go-to dollar bank account for crypto-minded Chinese folks.”
Perpetual Futures Arrive on Tron
The rise of perpetual futures DEX’s has been one of the standout narratives in decentralized finance (DeFi) this year.
Pioneered by dYdX and GMX, perp DEXs have expanded across the multichain ecosystem, with most chains now hosting at least one. Most recently, BNB’s Aster has emerged as a dominant force in the space, challenging Hyperliquid for the top spot.
Tron’s take on the concept, unveiled by Sun on Wednesday, Oct. 2, branded as both SunPerp and Sun Wukong, appeals directly to a Chinese audience. (The “monkey king,” Sun Wukong, is a well-known figure in Chinese myth and literature.)
“As the world’s first DEX to embrace a Chinese brand, ‘Sun Wukong’ is more than just a name; it’s a symbol,” a press release shared with CCN stated.
The name “embodies DeFi’s openness and inclusivity while representing the platform’s spirit of fearlessness, disruption, and aggressive progress,” it added.
Against the backdrop of Beijing’s crypto ban, the DEX’s pitch to Chinese users is certainly fearless.
As for openness and inclusivity, in China and beyond, decentralized, permissionless platforms have shown strong resistance to censorship. As long as there is no central host or administrator to target, all it takes is a VPN to skirt local restrictions and start trading.
Top Trending Crypto Articles
James Morales is CCN’s blockchain and crypto policy reporter. He has been working in the news media since 2020, writing about topics such as payments, banking and financial technology. These days, he likes to explore the latest blockchain innovations and the evolving landscape of global crypto regulation.
With an educational background in social anthropology and media studies, James uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
