It started like this
A few exciting things have happened on March 12th in History. Let’s see. That was the day in which Moscow became Russia’s capital (1918); in 1930 Gandhi started the Salt March, which had momentous repercussions in Indian society; the Truman Doctrine was proclaimed in 1947; it was the day in which the Church of England ordained its first female priest (1994), and we could keep going on.
For cryptonauts, this could become the day remembered because it was when Justin Sun (Tron’s CEO and founder) announced to the world that he was in a thoroughly celebratory mood. Mr. Sun felt like celebrating the current success enjoyed by several of his ongoing projects, namely Tron, USDT (the stable coin that will be co-launched with Tether in Tron’s network), and BTT (the BitTorrent Token that will power the new Tron-based BitTorrent network).
So Mr. Sun used his Twitter account (as usual) to get the party started which consists of a USD 20 million dollar USDT that would happen only after Mr. Sun would randomly give a Tesla car way to one of his Tweeter followers. See, there’s really no question about why Mr. Sun is considered to be one of the most adept marketing tacticians in the world, let alone the cryptosphere.
So the unavoidable happened. The tweet went viral. Partly because being eligible to join the Tesla raffle required for you to follow Mr. Sun’s Twitter account and to re-tweet said message.
We have a winner!
The lucky winner was to be announced on March 27th, which he was. It was a person who goes by @uzgaroth, from the USA. He, of course, welcomed the news and tried to get ahold of Mr. Sun.
But then, the tweet with @uzgaroth name on it got deleted. Mr. Sun explained that the tweet in question included a video which was just too bulky for Tweeter’s servers to manage correctly. Suspicion ran rampant from that moment on. Mr. Sun is a polarizing figure that some love and some hate, but who leaves nobody indifferent, so the haters took this chance to denounce the whole giveaway thing as a cynical scam.
Or do we?
The Tron Foundation realized that the giveaway’s transparency left something to be desired, so they canceled it. The new owner of a Tesla was suddenly Tesla less. A new draw was announced, this time in a live stream so that no doubts could cast their ugly shadow over the process.
But the man who lost a promised Tesla wasn’t a happy camper at all. He started to complain about being scammed, and he began to get help (and support) from many Tron community members. He created quite a bit of havoc in a community that’s usually known for being friendly and civil.
Both haters and more neutral observers questioned if better transparency should be achieved by undermining Tron’s and Mr. Sun’s hard-earned reputation for always delivering on promises. A lot of discussions went on in Twitter and other places over the web.
Mr. Sun reacted by apologizing to @uzgaroth and offering him a ticker for the next Nitron summit, travel expenses included. While we don’t know if the proposal was accepted, it was useless in terms of quieting things down.
We do have a winner now, seriously…
And then, the day for the “real” draw finally arrived. It happened, and a new winner was announced while the former winner was filling up Twiter with slightly aggressive comments about the giveaway, Tron, Mr. Sun, and all those involved. The new “real) winner was Vietnam’s @LeoHuynhPro.
It could have all ended here, but it didn’t.
Those who were angry, to begin with, got even more upset. Many of them threatened to sell all their TRX tokens and leave the community behind for good. They were asking for the car to be awarded to the original winner, and they were quite vocal and adamant about it. It seemed that the crypto verse’s first popular rebellion (no, we are not counting forks as rebellions) was about to start.
OK, let it be two winners
And then, Mr. Sun showed the world how you could take advantage of a very adverse situation.
He chose to go the Solomonic way by awarding a Tesla to both winners. That way transparency would be ensured, but he would also be honoring his words to the first winner.
That made both winners, happy. The initial winner showed his gratitude and goodwill by deleting the unfavorable posts he had written previously.
But haters always find something to hate. That’s their thing. So even this generous decision by Justin Sun became controversial among some people for reasons we couldn’t possibly understand or explain to you.
Justin Sun has earned a reputation as a shrewd businessman, a charismatic leader, a visionary, but above all, somebody in whose word you can trust, a man who always delivers on every promise he makes.
That kind of prestige is exceedingly hard to earn and, once you have it, the wisest move would always be to keep it shiny. And that is well-worth two Tesla cars, instead of one. Because the trust of what is probably the most active community in the blockchain world, is something that you just can’t buy and, if you lose it, you may not recover it, ever.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.
Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.