TRON: The technological neutrality of the cryptocurrency industry should not be politicized, and decentralization remains an important direction

Source: TRON

Recently, after Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and paid a fine of up to $4.3 billion, the crypto industry has faced the harshest regulatory storm this year. In recent years, governments in some regions, including the United States, have begun to target well-known platforms in the crypto industry, raising concerns among domestic officials and industry insiders that other regions may gain a competitive advantage in the crypto space. Meanwhile, industry practitioners have started to shift their attention to Asia, with TRON founder Justin Sun recently expressing a willingness to cooperate with regulators to promote the development of crypto technology, while emphasizing that the focus of the industry remains on decentralization.

Following Binance's settlement, Western media outlets, including Bloomberg and Reuters, reported that terrorist organizations such as Hamas may be using the TRON network for fundraising and transfers, causing market panic.

Why Target TRON?

The reason may lie in the fact that the U.S. has yet to produce a giant in crypto technology, and due to Israel's ongoing search for breakthroughs amid the geopolitical conflict in Gaza, crypto platforms, driven by developers and user communities, have become easy targets for indiscriminate political crackdowns by Israel and the U.S.

In the case of TRON, the platform has gained nearly 200 million users in just over five years. With its solid underlying technology and the fastest, lowest-cost transfer services, it has become the largest platform in the crypto industry. Additionally, the world's largest stablecoin, USDT, is pegged to the U.S. dollar, avoiding the massive volatility seen with other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, making it the most popular medium of exchange. Based on huge demand, TRON accounts for over 60% of USDT circulation.

Overall, due to some inherent advantages, TRON and USDT are susceptible to being exploited by third parties, thus becoming innocent victims.

Moreover, based on the original reports from foreign media, their conclusions are not 100% certain. For example, Reuters stated in its related report that it could not independently confirm whether Hamas used TRON.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the crypto industry's development. With the increase in global users and the impact of crypto technology on traditional financial systems, some countries and regions have begun to tighten regulatory policies and continuously suppress the crypto industry.

According to a report released by Huobi Research Institute last year, the global crypto community has reached 320 million people. In many economically underdeveloped regions, such as Vietnam and the Philippines in Southeast Asia, as well as Africa, integrating into the global network through crypto technology is the most convenient choice for the populations in these areas. As a neutral tool and a return to the expectation of internet decentralization, crypto technology has indeed improved living conditions in underdeveloped regions.

Market analysts generally believe that the U.S. failure in the crypto industry is the main reason for its efforts to suppress cryptocurrencies alongside its allies. Last year, the collapse of FTX, a leading crypto exchange, and the imprisonment of its American founder SBF, allowed the Chinese exchange Binance to continue to dominate. Meanwhile, Coinbase, the first platform claiming to operate domestically in the U.S., has remained lukewarm, resulting in Binance and Changpeng Zhao facing hefty fines this year.

Additionally, Facebook (now renamed Meta), founded by Mark Zuckerberg, faced failure with its cryptocurrency project Libra, which had received significant resources a few years ago, and after rebranding and shifting focus to the metaverse last year, it stumbled again, marking a double defeat for American giants in the crypto space.

The politicization of crypto technology in global competition has deepened, with crypto projects continuously becoming victims. After Binance and TRON were targeted, media reports indicated that another cryptocurrency exchange, Bybit, would also be investigated.

Despite being in a precarious situation, TRON founder Justin Sun continues to call for "providing instant, affordable, and reliable transactions as always," and he expressed gratitude to everyone in the industry who has contributed to the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies.