Justin Sun x Jin Ming Interview (Part 2): How Do You Build Your Own Playbook for Investing and Life?

Podcast: William Joy

Compiled by: Yuliya

Introduction: This episode of Golden Age is the second half of Jin Ming's conversation with Justin Sun. After the first part (related reading: A Conversation with Justin Sun: In the AI Golden Age, How Should Ordinary People Place Their Bets?) discussed investment positions and market judgment, this episode goes deeper into Sun's personal growth path, covering his investment philosophy, business communication, the Trump-related litigation dispute, a private relationship dispute, AI's participation in major decisions, and body management and long-term health. Sun sums up his growth method as a fusion of the traits of Buffett, Musk and Trump: learning value investing and risk control from Buffett, understanding tech innovation and growth narratives from Musk, and learning personal branding and communication from Trump.

In addressing controversies, regarding the lawsuit related to World Liberty Financial, Sun stressed that there is no contradiction between investors defending their rights in accordance with the law and supporting US digital currency policy. On the private relationship dispute and his status as a public figure, he explained the complex relationship between litigation procedure and personal expression.

Sun also disclosed that he is trying to bring AI into major life decisions. On health management, he laid out a data-driven long-term plan to optimize his physical condition through AI, smart devices, precise diet logging and professional testing, and set a goal of lowering his body fat rate below 18% by October 9, 2027, promising to submit to public scrutiny at that time.

Buffett, Musk and Trump: How to Form Your Own Playbook for Investing and Life

Jin Ming: Is there anyone you emulate in communication? CZ, for example, or other people you approve of? How do you see the strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your communications team?

Justin Sun: I don't think of it as emulating. If you look at my whole approach to life, I'm a hybrid crossbreed of three people: Musk, Trump and Buffett!

Jin Ming: Sorry, I can't help laughing. The three of them merged into Justin Sun?

Justin Sun: Exactly! And as it happens, all three are my alumni at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). People used to joke that Penn had a Big Three. Later, as I fused the three of their playbooks into one, people joked that a fourth giant was gradually emerging: Justin Sun.

Life is often a matter of coincidences. In 2011, when I applied to US universities, I applied to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, UCLA and Penn. Harvard and Yale didn't want me at all and rejected me outright; Stanford and Penn both admitted me. And I happened to pick Penn. Mind you, when I applied in 2011, Penn wasn't yet seen by most people as top-tier Tier 1. It's over these years, with the rise of the Big Three, that Penn started to feel it had made it too. Back then, apart from Buffett, Musk's Tesla had a market cap of only about $2 billion — everyone was still on the path of growth.

Jin Ming: But Buffett doesn't do communication at all. Whose communication habits and abilities did you actually learn? Mainly Trump's?

Justin Sun: What I'm talking about isn't just communication, but my entire life charter and playbook:

• First, on investing and risk control, I learned from Buffett and Munger. I fully absorbed their fundamentals-focused value investing approach. This theory is like the kung fu of Zhang Sanfeng of Wudang or Chongyang Zhenren — extremely solid, with a strong foundation. Coincidentally, old-guard assets like Buffett and Munger don't want to touch new-school territory like crypto, so I simply take Buffett's playbook and use it to fight the new-school crowd — a strike from a higher dimension, giving me an extremely strong edge.

• Second, Buffett has a weakness, and Musk filled it. Buffett's era was all about cigar butts, valuations, and when the P/E ratio would return real money; but after the high-tech revolution, today's financial markets have changed — they're driven by tech narratives and expectations. Musk filled in the piece on how to judge high-tech, high-growth. I didn't go into cars (I explained in an earlier interview why I didn't), but Buffett's fundamental risk control plus Musk's tech narrative became my twin engines. How to allocate among past, present and future is crucial.

• Third, on personal IP and communication, I mainly learned from Trump, with some from Musk. I knew about Trump very early — I knew him in elementary school. Back then he hosted the reality show The Apprentice, descending in a helicopter leading two teams in business battles. I watched every single season, and I even learned my spoken English from that show.

These three actually also have a law of mutual disdain. And I, as a junior, fully fused and absorbed all three.

Jin Ming: Haha, you couldn't find such a person even in Jin Yong's martial arts novels — absorbing Guo Jing, Linghu Chong and Zhang Wuji all into one person. Fascinating.

Justin Sun: Let me give you one detail and you'll see how much they disdain each other. Back when I won the Buffett lunch and dined with him, I pitched one thing to him with emphasis: I said you could go acquire Musk's Tesla. At the time Tesla's market cap had sunk to a low, Musk was bent on taking Tesla private and selling it, and badly needed a heavyweight like Buffett to endorse it — and the price was very cheap.

Jin Ming: But with Buffett's investment style, it's absolutely impossible for him to buy Tesla. He wouldn't even invest in it, let alone acquire it.

Justin Sun: You're absolutely right! If he had bought it, he wouldn't be Buffett. Buffett laid out his logic to my face at the time. He said: Do you know why I'm still alive today? I never take a heavy position in a company that can give me a surprise. If I wake up tomorrow morning and the waiter brings a newspaper, and the front-page headline is a company I invested in — as long as I can picture that uncontrollable scenario in my head, I will absolutely never invest in it.

Jin Ming: He can't accept such disruptive, violent change. It runs completely counter to his investment style.

Justin Sun: More than counter — in our words, watching those wild swings could give you a cerebral hemorrhage and you'd be gone in an instant, because the changes are just too fast and too big.

Litigation Is Just Business: The US Lawsuit and the Logic Behind $4–5 Billion Bets

Jin Ming: Speaking of the Big Three, you're currently in litigation with one of them — Trump's WLFI (World Liberty Financial). A lot of your business intersects with the US. At this juncture, suing his related interest, don't you consider personal ties? Aren't you worried about hidden risks and trouble down the road?

Justin Sun: First, let me state one thing: I still firmly support President Trump's crypto policy. I think his digital currency policy and AI strategy are both very successful.

The reason we're suing World Liberty Financial is entirely the normal behavior of a commercial investor. We invested in them, but they have problems with insufficient investment transparency, inadequate disclosure to investors, and even suspected fraud. We filed the suit through the proper judicial channel in a California federal court, and ultimately a federal judge will decide — this is entirely consistent with how the US rule-of-law system operates.

This in no way affects our judgment on other major trends:

• I personally remain heavily invested in US tech stocks;

• Last month TRX's US spot ETF was officially approved, and we also rang the bell at Cboe for the second time for our ecosystem on US stocks;

• Our US stock business is also being put on-chain at scale;

• Our judgment that the dollar will strengthen and the AI industry will remain strong is completely unchanged.

Domestic public opinion has exaggerated and overcomplicated this lawsuit. In fact, it's just a business dispute, business as usual.

Jin Ming: I remember you invested $40 million at the time? Now even if you win the lawsuit, get the tokens back and sell them, it's probably worth at most $3–5 million, because they've fallen so badly.

Justin Sun: Yes, the price has indeed fallen a lot. But the amount we're seeking in litigation won't be that low — it's not simply returning tokens and refunding money; based on the agreement's subject matter at the time, it could be $400–500 million.

That said, even $400–500 million isn't a crippling blow within our overall portfolio. We invest like an old hunter — extremely patient. Once we're fully convinced, fully confident, and about to make a truly major decision, we'll put in at least $4–5 billion in a single bet. That's what counts as a big position for us.

Responding Directly to the Relationship Dispute: The Long Post I Had to Publish, and a Life Taken Over by AI

Jin Ming: Let's talk about that matter that caused a huge stir online a while back. Everyone was discussing whether you did it to get the bride price back. Apart from money, why did you have to make such a private relationship dispute public on the internet?

Justin Sun: Fine, I'll talk about it, and I won't name names. After I published that article I haven't given any interviews — that long post already said everything I needed to say. But I can talk about the real context at the time:

First, she and I are both public figures. At that point I had already made up my mind to sue her through legal channels. In the US, as soon as you file a complaint, the court information goes public online, the media will immediately report all of it, and everyone will come asking me what exactly happened. So I simply had no option to keep it hidden and say nothing. Rather than wait for the court to release it and have others spread rumors, I could only pick a moment before the court spoke and tell the story from my own perspective.

Second, even an honest official finds it hard to judge family matters — that's been true for five thousand years. The grievances between two people are hard for any outsider, even the parties themselves, to untangle clearly, so I never expected people to fully understand when I published that article.

• In the entire long post, I didn't name a single real third person; I used pronouns throughout;

• There could be a hundred million things between us, and I picked only the five most representative ones to tell;

• Some people accused me of exposing privacy. I disagree. In a relationship, as soon as two people open their mouths to say anything, it's essentially private. What I faced at the time was simply whether to speak and how to speak;

• When I wrote it, I tried my best to detach myself and stay absolutely objective. You may feel, while watching the drama unfold, that I had many choices, but in that situation my room for choice was far smaller than people imagine.

Jin Ming: In business you care enormously about ROI (return on investment) and risk control. Do you think that business logic holds in relationships?

Justin Sun: In the world of relationships, I admit I'm a complete novice. I don't have any conclusions.

As everyone later learned, that decision to separate was basically made for me by Claude. Many of the major decisions in my life now are made with Claude's deep involvement. It may sound too futuristic, and some may even think I'm dumping the blame on AI. But the fact is, on major matters I very much tend to follow Claude's advice.

For a young man facing his white moonlight, the impact is actually enormous, and making that kind of clean break is extremely painful. In a way, this was also a renunciation and a transformation for me — I said goodbye to my past emotional cognition, and AI took over my decision-making system. I never wrote that article to seek sympathy or to make people take sides; I simply poured out, as it was, the things I was confused about, couldn't figure out, and didn't know were right or wrong.

Jin Ming: Looking at the public reaction that later built up, do you feel you let her down?

Justin Sun: It's hard for me to define it with the words let her down. Since she left, we've had no direct contact at all. Later, after the article came out, some mutual friends reached out to me, but I never contacted her once. What's past is completely past.

Jin Ming: Later public opinion flipped and people sympathized with her instead, with most of the negative sentiment landing on you. In a sense, your long post actually helped her. Is that reversal what you wanted to see?

Justin Sun: I had no preset expectations or inclinations regarding public opinion. If I had wanted to manipulate public sentiment, I would never have written that article. I just wanted to express what I didn't understand. That it ended up fermenting the way it did was never a form I had envisioned.

Jin Ming: We've known each other for eleven or twelve years. Looking back, if something could bring huge returns but might not be dignified, you would usually still choose to do it. Now that you're extremely successful, if you encounter something hugely profitable but not dignified again, would you still do it?

Justin Sun: When I think about things now, I've actually moved beyond the dimensions of returns or dignity. I discuss with Claude, and once the two of us align our understanding, as long as we believe the thing is essentially right, we'll do it.

As for benefits and so-called dignity, over a longer time horizon they all change. Back then we invested in Bitcoin at 1 yuan and it rose to 100,000 yuan, with countless ups and downs in between; the same with Tesla and Nvidia — in 2015 Nvidia was still using GPUs to mine Ethereum. Even the dinner with Buffett back then: the real, complex maneuvering behind it was less than 1% visible to the public. My principle for how I conduct myself now is extremely simple: at the moment of doing it, if I and AI judge it to be right, we do it, and I fully accept whatever consequences follow.

From Fat Over Muscle to a Lean-Muscle Revolution: A One-Year Body Fat Bet

Jin Ming: When we met in Singapore last time, you were about 10 jin (roughly 5 kg) thinner than now. For the week or two after that we kept talking about working out and having lean muscle. Later you started a relationship too — girls generally like men with physical appeal and muscle definition, and you well know the importance of physique management. But you're someone with such strong execution — why didn't it translate into body results for so long?

Justin Sun: I've reflected on it. Mainly two reasons:

• At the time I recognized it in words, but it wasn't a high enough priority in my head. A person's execution follows priorities; if something isn't at the very top of the list, it gets delayed indefinitely.

• And most importantly — recently my understanding of lean muscle underwent a complete, fundamental change.

This time I figured it out with nothing to do with physical attraction between men and women; I fully realized the decisive significance of muscle for health and quality of life in middle and old age.

On this matter, my thinking finally broke the superstition around the Big Three of Musk, Trump and Buffett:

• Not only do the three of them not train muscle at all, they even take pride in not working out;

• Trump and Buffett drink big gulps of full-sugar Coca-Cola in front of the whole world every day;

• Brian Johnson in Silicon Valley, who runs extreme anti-aging experiments, previously posted two comparison photos: one with thin limbs and a fat belly (similar to how I am now and how Musk is), and another recent photo with lean, sculpted muscle. Musk directly left a mocking comment underneath: The fat version of you was more handsome and healthier.

I was deeply influenced by the three of them in the past, and deep down felt exercise was a matter for you professional athletes — ordinary rich people simply didn't need it. But now I'm completely clear-headed: I'm building muscle so that when I'm 80, my energy and body can still be as robust as at 30, so I can keep learning AI at high intensity and discussing the world with Claude — rather than sitting in a wheelchair unable to take care of basic needs.

Jin Ming: Sounds very determined. So do you have an execution schedule in place now?

Justin Sun: Not only that, I've built a whole round-the-clock data tracking system, and it's fully up and running:

• Extremely simple and strict diet: no sugar, no oil, no salt; absolutely no sugary drinks or juice; a high-protein diet with dietary supplements. I photograph every meal and send it to AI, which calculates calories for me and creates a calorie deficit;

• A hardware data loop: an Oura Ring on my finger monitors physiological data in real time; a professional Withings body fat scale at home; regular precise DEXA bone density and body composition scans at the hospital;

• Regular resistance training: 35 minutes of strength training every two days. I record the movements and send the video to AI, while professional colleagues at the company help coach me. I don't force heavy bench presses, so there's no psychological burden at all.

I've run this system continuously for 20 days, trained 10 times, and my body fat rate has genuinely dropped a full 1%!

Jin Ming: By eye I'd say your body fat is around 24% to 25% now? What's your one-year goal?

Justin Sun: You see it very accurately! When I started training I was 26.8%, and right now at this moment I'm 25.8%. The one-year goal I set is to get below 20%.

Jin Ming: 20% is still thick — that's fat over muscle, no definition will show at all. For a man to have truly lean muscle, body fat has to get to between 16% and 18%.

Justin Sun: The baseline goal I set for myself and AI first was below 20%; with some effort, I don't rule out going straight to 18% or even lower.

Jin Ming: Can you really do it in a year? What if you can't?

Justin Sun: I can absolutely do it. If I can't, then a year from now I'll post a photo of my body taken with an unedited camera on every platform, with no Photoshop and no AI retouching, and accept everyone's public scrutiny and public shaming.

Jin Ming: Great! We travel and hold meetings all the time, with fragmented schedules. Let me teach you the strongest bodyweight exercise selected by the Journal of Strength in 2024 — the burpee:

Do a push-up with your chest fully touching the ground, then push up and jump upward with both feet driving. The push-up trains the upper body, the jump trains the lower body, and between the landing and the rise it powerfully activates the whole body's core muscle groups.

After a meeting or an interview, whenever you can free up a bit of floor space, do 10 to 20 reps, squeeze in one or two sets a day, and your whole-body strength and cardio are all covered. You can even do it on rest days when you don't work out. As long as you keep at it every day, it won't even take a year — in 3 to 6 months your physique will be transformed, and your body fat will go straight to 16%.

Justin Sun: Excellent. I'm adding this move to my daily must-do list right away, even on rest days. Same time next year — you're welcome to come and personally inspect my lean-muscle results.

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