Justin Sun’s latest attempt to get more Twitter followers has backfired spectacularly after allegations of competition rigging following a botched cash and Tesla giveaway. Sun, whose seems to need Twitter followers more than oxygen, posted an initial tweet on March 12 announcing that he was giving away $20 million between 88 winners and a Tesla to one lucky winner, in return for a follow and a retweet. This from the man who proudly boasted to Vitalik Buterin that he was first to pass a million followers. The nerve. Anyway, the deadline passed on Wednesday and Sun (or his minions) drew the ‘winners’. In an embarrassing turn of events, the team (or the algorithm, let’s be fair) picked a Twitter bot as the Tesla winner. Now you might think a bot would be a perfectly good recipient of a car that can drive itself, but Sun decided otherwise and cancelled the draw, stipulating more entry requirements to rule out bots and the like.
Second Time (Un)lucky
Sun conducted the draw again, this time on video for ‘transparency’, with Twitter user @uzgaroth being the lucky winner. However, the video glitched so badly that @uzgaroth’s profile picture appeared some thirty seconds before the draw was made, which didn’t exactly help the transparency claims. Sun announced @uzgaroth as the winner…then deleted the tweet and all mentions of him, following the failed draw.
We shared a video of the selection process for transparency. Due to the large size of the video, Twitter wasn’t able to compress it properly resulting in a glitch. We will contact Twitter to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We apologize to the community for the mishap.
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) March 28, 2019
It seems then that the draw was made again and a different user, @LeoHuynhPro, was picked for a Tesla instead. @uzgaroth contacted Sun and asked him for clarification on his win, but never heard back, at which point he informed Twitter of the state of play, which sent Twitter into a meme-meltdown.
I thank all those who support me, this type of scam must end in the #crypto community, it is unfortunate that @justinsuntron acts in a seemingly dishonest act, we will continue to fight until we get to keep his original promise.@Tronfoundation #TRX #tron #bitcoin #XRPcommunity pic.twitter.com/O87rK2HFNR
— XRP_UzGar ⛓-฿ TRX (@uzgaroth) March 29, 2019
Sun finally responded, incredibly offering @uzgaroth free entry to his NiTROn event in 2020 instead of the car. This went down like the Titanic, with accusations of Sun pulling a scam abounding. Following the pressure, Sun announced Friday that he had “happily decided to give away two Teslas” (yeah, right) where he said that he had already given a Tesla to one winner but had also “decided to give a Tesla to @uzgaroth”. How magnanimous of you, Justin. It’s not like you told him he’d won or anything did you?
More to the Story
It doesn’t stop there though. SharkCIA crypto analyst John Galt smelt a rat (unsurprisingly) and investigated the draws for the 88 cash prize winners as well as the Telsa cock up, suggesting that the IP hashes and time stamps showed that the 88 winners were “clearly the same person”. The whole debacle has, for many, shown Justin Sun for what he is – an unscrupulous manipulator desperate for attention for him and his project, Tron. Whatever the truth, the fact is that the entire charade looks extremely bad on Sun and the Tron project and has further damaged his reputation with the crypto world. And will the cars ever turn up? Place your bets now…
OMG!! Thank you @justinsuntron for my new Tesla!! ??
Below is a picture I took right after he delivered it! ? so happy rn pic.twitter.com/sI3SHc8OXb
— ฿oogiecrypto ✪ (@BoogieCrypto) March 29, 2019
