Author: Penny,

On April 5, 2025, the "BUIDL 2025" Web3 Industry Summit is being held in the night of Victoria Harbor. While drinking and having fun, a group photo quickly flooded the screen: Huobi founder Li Lin, Binance founder CZ, and Tron TRON founder Justin Sun, three of them, were in the C position, raising their glasses to celebrate, smiling brightly, and surrounded by other crypto industry leaders.

Another more eye-catching photo was circulated at the conference - Justin Sun and Li Lin hugged each other and drank "cup wine". Obviously, two months ago, Sun Yuchen publicly attacked Li Lin to conceal the financial loopholes of Huobi. The two of them faced each other and refused to give in. Did they abandon the past and let go of their past grudges after only two months?

The two photos seem to be the epitome of the "golden age" of the crypto industry - both the undercurrents of grievances and entanglements, and the symbiotic picture of interweaving interests. Their convergence is not only a subtle reflection of personal relationships, but also a witness to the crypto industry from grassroots to compliance. Below, the editor will take you to a look at the love, hate and affection among industry leaders.

Li Lin and Justin Sun: Debt disputes are endlessly settled

Li Lin and Justin Sun had a big dispute over the acquisition of Huobi, which everyone in the circle knew about. The origin of the matter can be traced back to October 8, 2022, when Huobi founder Li Lin sold Huobi shares to Hong Kong Baiyu Capital, which is affiliated to Justin Sun. Three years after the delivery ended, in February 2025, Justin Sun suddenly publicly accused Li Lin of concealing due diligence materials, saying that there was a "financial hole" of $30 million within Huobi and he had to fill it out of his own pocket.

Li Lin posted a long article to respond that during the 2022 delivery, the two parties had differences in the calculation of user assets and reserved sufficient reserve funds; the "30 million US dollars fund hole" mentioned by Justin Sun was actually a position cut caused by the extreme market conditions when the exchange operated a margin trading business, and the company's revenue had completed financial processing, so it should not be regarded as an undisclosed "financial loophole".

In fact, this is not the first time the two have met. Sun and Li’s grudge began shortly after Huobi was sold.

In May 2023, Justin Sun posted a message accusing Li Lin's younger brother Li Wei of obtaining zero-cost HTs through improper means many times and selling them. He also stated that in order to protect the rights and interests of the HT community, these tokens must be recovered and destroyed. Subsequently, Huobi founder Li Lin responded on his circle of friends, expressing his hope that the other party would provide evidence. If it is confirmed that Li Wei obtained a zero-cost HT through illegal means, he is willing to pay 10 times the HT to Huobi in his personal name; if it is not true, he hopes that Huobi will return the user's legal assets.

Afterwards, Justin Sun did not provide conclusive evidence, and the tweet of the accusation was also deleted. Although it caused widespread doubts from the community about Huobi's internal management, the revelation was finally left unresolved. However, the grudges and grievances between Li, Lin, Sun and Justin were not settled. In February 2025, due to the "financial hole" of $30 million, the two cryptocurrency giants once again launched a public opinion war on the Internet.

The photos of Justin Sun and Li Lin hugging each other and drinking "cup wine" at the conference gave the outside world some more speculation about the relationship between the two. In the photo, the two are smiling and behave intimately, like old friends who have not seen each other for a long time, and they don’t look like there was a financial dispute of $30 million two months ago. This may be the act of the cryptocurrency giants in public, or the resolving of past grudges after private reconciliation, and the relationship between Sun and Lin "love and killing each other" has become a mystery.

However, when it comes to cup of wine, this is not the first time that Li Lin has had cup of wine with other bigwigs in the currency circle. As early as 2018, Li Lin and OKEx (predecessor of OKX) boss Xu Mingxing were having shirtless skewers on the roadside, and had a glass of wine at the dinner party. OKEx was unable to withdraw coins and Xu Mingxing was invited to have tea, and it was also Li Lin who supported Xu Mingxing in the community. Although there are some elements of acting, it does express the vision of entrepreneurs to make the currency circle stronger in an era of indoctrination, full of opportunities and risks. Later, Xu Mingxing called out to Li Lin: "I'm a real brother after drinking the glass of wine. Thanks to Huobi Li Lin for standing up to treat my pain."

CZ and Justin Sun: Both enemies and friends, love and kill each other

Both Justin Sun and CZ are regarded as leaders in the field of encryption. Tron TRON founded by Justin Sun and the dominant Huobi HTX form an ecological complementary and competitive relationship with CZ's Binance. The two also appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine, demonstrating their global influence. As industry pioneers, every little thing that has gone through the two of them is also a history of the development of the crypto industry.

As early as 2015, He Yi, Justin Sun and Qudian CEO Luo Min appeared on the stage of the reality show "You're the One". They wore a onesie with goat horns and a white hat to perform a song called "The Song of the Twisted Goat". At that time, He Yi and CZ had just known each other for a year and worked together at OKcoin, serving as vice president and CTO respectively. The gears of fate are quietly turning, and these young people who are still immersed in the excitement of entering new industries may be hard to imagine that the future crypto industry will be disrupted by them.

The early years of the currency circle was full of infinite possibilities and imagination, and Justin Sun and CZ were in the stage of mutual cooperation and mutual achievement.

In October 2018, Justin Sun and CZ met at the Geneva World Investment Forum. It was the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Binance established the Blockchain Charity Foundation and launched a blockchain-based donation platform to support countries such as Uganda that are affected by floods and landslides. The Tron Foundation also donated $3 million to support blockchain philanthropy.

2019 is the "honeymoon period" between Justin Sun and CZ. On January 28, BitTorrent (BTT), a project that Sun acquired previously, completed the issuance of 59.4 billion BTT on Binance Launchpad, the Binance blockchain asset issuance platform, which took about 14 minutes and raised US$7.1 million. BitTorrent became Binance’s first IEO project, marking the beginning of early collaboration between CZ and Justin Sun. After TRON launched TRC20‑USDT in April, Binance quickly provided support and launched the "Enjoy 16% annualized income with TRC20‑USDT" event, introducing a large amount of liquidity to the TRON ecosystem. At the same time, Justin Sun also frequently supported Binance on Weibo and Twitter to vigorously promote this cooperation result. During that time, the cooperation between the two was a model - Justin Sun used the influence of the Binance platform to promote the TRON ecosystem, while Binance attracted more USDT users with the new chain and high interest rate subsidies of TRON, and the two sides achieved a win-win situation.

In September 2019, Binance and Paxos Trust Company jointly launched the stablecoin Binance USD (BUSD), and in less than two years, BUSD's market value quickly exceeded US$1 billion. On September 5, 2022, shortly after BUSD's market value hit $20 billion, Binance announced that it would stop using three stablecoins, USDC, USDP and TUSD, which compete with BUSD, and officially declared war with the stablecoin giant USDC.

The successful issuance and success of BUSD have enabled CZ to build its own encryption empire step by step with the help of platform advantages. Just one month after Binance announced the redemption plan, on October 28, 2022, Huobi Global, which had just been taken over by Justin Sun for 20 days, issued an announcement that HUSD triggered Article (11) of the Huobi Global token Management Rules, stipulated that HUSD transactions will be stopped on the same day and removed from the shelves, and the HUSD in the user's account will be directly redeemed to USDT. As soon as this news came out, the market was in an uproar, HUSD lost its peg, and its value fell rapidly, falling to US$0.3 on November 1, and has since been in a slump and completely withdrawn from the stablecoin competition market.

Coincidentally, HUSD is also a stablecoin project launched by Huobi and Paxos. In a blog post on HUSD’s first anniversary in July 22, the Paxos team also wrote: “We are proud to support three of the world’s top 6 stablecoins. As the first regulated trust company and qualified digital asset custodian, Paxos has unique expertise in this market.”

One month after the commemorative blog post was published, Paxos Lianchuang Rich Teo appeared in a high-end restaurant overseas together with Binance CEO CZ, and at that time there were still quite a few scandals in the crypto circle. Two months later, HUSD announced its end and Paxos became BUSD's "full-time housekeeper". The community speculated that this dinner might involve strategic discussions in the stablecoin market, which in turn influenced Huobi's decision on HUSD, however, these conjectures also lacked direct evidence and were not officially confirmed.

Two months after HUSD was removed, on December 30, 2022, Binance announced that it had completed the integration of Binance-Peg BUSD on the TRON network, which has now opened on the TRON network, and Justin Sun also actively retweeted and promoted its cooperation with Binance on Twitter. Regardless of whether the two had conflicts privately due to stablecoin cooperation, at least now, everything is still a prosperous and harmonious scene.

But the game between the two of them on stablecoins is still continuing in secret.

In May 2023, Justin Sun transferred 405 million TUSDs to Binance, which was suspected to be used to participate in the SUI token mining activity of Binance LaunchPool. This sparked debate among the crypto community, believing that it was like CZ helping Giant Whale to incentivize the mining pool of the Binance Exchange, allowing Justin Sun to obtain a new token SUI through its original huge amount of funds. The community accused such an action of suspected "insider trading." As public opinion fermented, Justin Sun responded that the original purpose of transfer was to "moving the parity spread" as a TUSD market maker to improve liquidity, not to participate in the event, but to contact the exchange for refunds for some funds that participated in the event due to mistakes. Subsequently, CZ also publicly stated that if Justin Sun uses these TUSDs to participate in mining, he will take action against him, and emphasized that LaunchPool is for retail users rather than "whales". A $405 million farce also came to an end in the disclaimer of both bosses.

It is worth noting that TUSD is the "succession token" of BUSD. On February 13, 2023, US SEC law enforcement officers issued a "Wells Notice" to Paxos, saying that the BUSD issued and listed by Paxos is an unregistered securities and plans to sue Paxos for violating the Investor Protection Act. Under the intervention of strong regulatory authorities, Binance has continuously removed BUSD trading pairs, and BUSD, whose market value once reached US$22 billion, has gradually withdrawn from the stage of history. After that, Binance turned his attention to another stablecoin, TUSD. Binance has taken a series of measures to increase TUSD trading pairs, Launchpool has opened TUSD Pool, and BTC/TUSD trading pairs are exempt from handling fees, etc. The strong support has made BTC/TUSD trading pairs surpass the BTC/USDT trading pairs in March 2023 and become the trading pair with the largest trading volume in Binance. After Binance's suspension of BUSD, support for other stablecoins such as TUSD and USDC also put Justin Sun's TRC‑USDT under new pressure.

On April 3, 2025, Justin Sun suddenly filed a lawsuit against First Digital Trust (FDT) for being insolvent and unable to fulfill the redemption of customer funds. FDT is the issuing agency of the stablecoin FDUSD and the asset management agency of TUSD. In the afternoon of the same day, Justin Sun said in a live broadcast conference that as early as 2023, Techteryx launched an investigation into FDT and found that a large amount of funds of custodial clients were misappropriated. At that time, Justin Sun provided assistance to Techteryx with his own funds to ensure that TUSD has sufficient liquidity, and TrueCoin was suspected of conspiring with FDT to illegally transfer US$456 million of TUSD reserves to Dubai Company. First Digital then responded to the allegation that the dispute only involves TUSD and has nothing to do with FDUSD, and First Digital is fully solvency.

There is no doubt that this move and subsequent Binance's behavior of "only notifying large investors in a small group and cutting retail investors" have put CZ and He Yi in an emergency public relations crisis again, causing the market to be dissatisfied with centralized exchanges. Justin Sun’s role in this storm is much more glorious, revealing insider trading in capital and protecting the rights and interests of all investors. Perhaps Justin Sun's original intention was to return his 500 million yuan deposit, which had no direct connection with Binance, but when FDUSD was decoupled for a short time, Binance on the storm was still involved in a public verbal war.

Although the two have competition in business, Justin Sun has spoken out for CZ many times during the public incident in the currency circle. After the SEC sued Binance in June 2023, Justin Sun publicly expressed his support for CZ on social media, saying that "as CZ's friend, he is willing to support CZ unswervingly and believe that justice will be done." In November 2023, CZ announced her resignation as CEO of Binance. Justin Sun highly praised CZ's contribution on social media, mentioning that he had known CZ for nearly a decade, affirming its leadership and industry driving force, saying that it "pushed the industry to an unprecedented height", and stressing that it will continue to strengthen its cooperation with Binance in the future.

When the photos of Li Lin and Justin Sun's "Glass of Wine" are flooding social media, and when CZ and Justin Sun are having fun at the summit, it is difficult for onlookers to tell whether this is a show or a sincere reconciliation. But perhaps the answer is not important - in the crypto industry, consensus on interests is far more cohesive than personal grievances. From the early grassroots world to the current wave of compliance, the game history of these bigwigs is a footnote to industry evolution. Their grudges and cooperation are essentially exploring a path that not only conforms to the regulatory framework but also does not lose the original intention of blockchain.

As Justin Sun said in an interview with Forbes: "Real innovators must adhere to long-termism." When the smile in the group photo is frozen, the night in Hong Kong is still bright, and the script of the crypto industry is still being written - the next scene may be a more intense competition, or a re-working hand in the crisis. The only thing that is certain is that the charm of this industry is hidden in these stories of "both enemies and friends".