As per the critics, Justin Sun has had many marketing missteps of late. The Tesla controversy paled into comparison to the Liverpool FC mistake, and now the erratic CEO has finally gone after the community that has helped support the fledgling coin gain its quick start, showing that too much power in the hands of a few people can go disastrously wrong.
Tesla and Liverpool: The harbingers
The Tesla marketing ploy was enough to harm any company’s reputation – where a CEO announces that a ‘random’ Twitter user will receive what was pictured to be a Tesla Model S. It was announced with the 20 million dollar airdrop that was supposed to be released in March but has yet to see the light of day.
To celebrate #BTT & #USDT–#TRON success, I am planning a $20m free cash airdrop. Good news-it's coming, bad news-I may decide to give away more! First, I will randomly pick 1 winner for a #Tesla up until 3/27! To apply, follow me and RT this tweet! Simple! #Blockchain pic.twitter.com/wFyzwtB3ur
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) March 12, 2019
Sun deleted the tweet and selected a “random” twitter user that people found out was a bot, causing many to believe that the whole marketing stunt was just a ploy that was never intended to be honored. This caused a ripple of discontent in the community and was quickly followed up with a colossal mistake when Justin Sun prematurely announced a partnership with Liverpool FC, one of the world’s largest soccer clubs. It is a soccer club that has a worldwide fanbase in the hundreds of millions.
Thank you for the unique and innovative invitation, Liverpool! I am impressed and I'm looking forward to exploring this #TRON new partnership together! @LFC #TRX $TRX #BTT $BTT 😇🤝 pic.twitter.com/7RhFw7QVbX
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) April 24, 2019
Having a fanbase that big comes with a lot of scrutinies and that scrutiny was aimed squarely at Sun’s announcement. A spokesperson for Liverpool FC said that there was no partnership and such marketing materials were regularly sent to companies so that Liverpool could understand their businesses and see if there was potential for any type of future partnership status.
“We do regularly engage with lots of companies to understand their business better and we have extended an invitation to Tron—along with many others. To be clear, no discussions have taken place.”
Many think it brought the good feelings in the Tron community to an all-time low and critics think that the Tron Foundation, which Sun leads, has not stopped the hapless CEO from poking his own eyes once again.
Reddit in an uproar
Communities on Reddit are a powerful thing. They can make or break many projects – reviving tv shows that are going off the air, influencing political events and even the odd media publicized witch-hunt. The point is that Reddit has become a driving force of the internet and if Reddit is unhappy with you, you had better watch out.
Last weekend, the subreddit /r/Tronix got taken over fully by the Tron Foundation and the visitors are not happy with the decision. One user claims that when Tron had mods in the mod team, they were censoring critical posts made about the GOC network. They also remove posts that put a negative spin on the Tronscan marketplace.
As per the allegations from a number of users, the incumbent mods removed the foundation affiliated mods for this purposes, but it seems that the foundation has found its way back in. All the top mod positions belong to employees of the Tron Foundation.
This has led to many people saying that they are selling off their Tron assets slowly but surely. Many have said that they will not sell all of their coins, citing the need to be diversified, but that their faith was no longer in the project and that this was the end of their active involvement as evangelists of a coin many thought would push Ethereum to the brink.
Being a neutral observer we think that Tron taking over the official Tronix subreddit is not a cool thing as a whole, but it’s not such severe issue which would force people into selling all their TRX holdings. Let’s see how things unfold.
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