The winner of June’s $28 million auction for a seat on Blue Origin’s suborbital spaceship revealed himself today — and is buying tickets for five more people to fly with him a year from now.
It would be hard to come up with a quirkier résumé than the one put together by Justin Sun, the 31-year-old crypto pioneer who put in the winning bid.
He’s a Chinese-born entrepreneur who founded the Tron cryptocurrency platform and serves as the CEO of Rainberry Inc., the file-sharing company formerly known as BitTorrent Inc.
Sun, a protégé of Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, recently became a citizen of the Caribbean island nation of Grenada. Last week he was named Grenada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva.
Although his net worth is currently estimated at a mere $200 million, he’s no stranger to high-stakes bidding. In 2019, he bid $4.6 million just to have lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett.
Sun said he was drawn to Blue Origin’s vision of sharing the spaceflight experience with the wider public.