The $4,567,888 Buffett Lunch Justin Sun Still Retells

Justin Sun still treats his $4,567,888 charity lunch with Warren Buffett as a once-in-a-lifetime education. Buffett sent the gifted Bitcoin to charity in 2020 and left Berkshire Hathaway’s chair on September 18, 2026.

The Tron founder has been retelling the Omaha dinner since the plates were cleared. Buffett’s public line on the coins did not bend.

A $4,567,888 Check Bought Steak in Omaha

Sun won the 20th eBay Power Lunch for GLIDE with a record-setting $4,567,888 charity bid, announced on June 3, 2019, when he was 28 and running Tron and BitTorrent. He said he wanted to talk blockchain with a pioneer of value investing and to take tips on bold bets.

Buffett, then 88, called himself delighted through his assistant and said GLIDE would use the money to help many thousands of people. Karen Hanrahan, GLIDE’s president and CEO, said the proceeds would go to people facing homelessness, addiction, hunger, and isolation in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.

The meal was supposed to be lunch in San Francisco. It became dinner in Nebraska, on Buffett’s home ground, almost eight months after the auction closed.

FROM AUCTION TO OMAHA

1. May 26, 2019: The eBay listing opens at $25,000.
2. May 31, 2019: Bidding closes at $4,567,888 after 18 bids from five bidders, above the old $3,456,789 mark from 2012 and 2016.
3. July 25, 2019: The planned lunch at Quince in San Francisco is postponed after Sun cites kidney stones.
4. January 23, 2020: Dinner starts at 6 p.m. Central Time at Happy Hollow Club in Omaha and runs more than three hours over steaks and Coca-Cola.

Sun posted that the restaurant check itself was $515.05 and called it the most delicious meal ever. A Tron Foundation spokesperson later said the talk covered business, life, crypto, and payments, and that Buffett told the table blockchain has its value. Buffett’s assistant, Debbie Bosanek, called the discussion interesting and enjoyable. Those are the friendly versions. The on-the-record version arrived a month later on television.

Did Warren Buffett Keep Justin Sun’s Bitcoin?

Sun arrived with a Samsung Galaxy Fold loaded as a prop and a gift. During the meal he sent 1 BTC to the phone and loaded 1,930,830 TRX, a string that matches Buffett’s birthday of August 30, 1930, plus smaller piles of Tron-family tokens. Decrypt put the TRX at roughly $40,000 in early February 2020. Sun posted that Bitcoin had already risen 16 percent since the transfer and told followers the coins were safely stored on Buffett’s Fold.

WHAT SUN LOADED ON THE PHONE

• Bitcoin: 1 BTC, transferred during dinner and posted with an explorer link.
• TRX: 1,930,830 tokens, the birthday number, then worth about $40,000.
• Tron-family extras: 100 BTT, 100 WIN, and 100 USDT on TRC-20.

On February 24, 2020, Becky Quick put the gift to him on CNBC. Buffett said cryptocurrencies have no value, produce nothing, cannot mail a check, and sit at zero. Pressed on the coins from Sun, he was blunt.

I don’t own any cryptocurrency. I never will.

Warren Buffett, then Berkshire Hathaway chairman, on CNBC with Becky Quick, February 24, 2020

Sun answered on X the next day with explorer links, including the Bitcoin address Sun posted as proof and the TRX address from the gifted phone. He wrote that the coins remained intact, that he would not call Buffett a crypto investor, and that the gift was up 20 percent on the Fold. An address on a public chain does not show who holds the keys. Buffett’s office said the wallet went to GLIDE, the same house that cashed the auction check. CNBC’s Squawk Box aired that handoff on February 25, 2020.

Sun has kept repeating, including in February 2023 and again in February 2024, that he believes Buffett still holds the Bitcoin. Buffett’s stated position is the opposite. He also joked about a “Warren currency” with a little ledger sheet, which Sun answered by offering to support a WarrenCoin on Tron. That exchange did not turn Berkshire into a coin holder.

The Final Lunch Sold for $19,000,100

Sun’s check was a record for one year and a middle chapter for the auction. GLIDE skipped the lunch in 2020 and 2021. On June 17, 2022, an anonymous bidder paid $19,000,100 for the 21st and last Buffett seating, more than four times Sun’s winning number. Buffett, then 91, said it had been nothing but good and that the winners shared a belief the money would be put to use. Across 21 auctions that began in 2000, the lunches raised about $53.2 million for GLIDE.

BUFFETT-GLIDE LUNCH WINNING BIDS

The traditional room was Smith & Wollensky in Manhattan, where Buffett ate steak and cherry Coke and the restaurant put up its own $10,000 for GLIDE. Sun broke that pattern by trying to pull the 2019 seating to San Francisco, then by filling the table with crypto names, then by turning the delay into a public saga. Most earlier winners stayed anonymous. He did not.

Salesforce chair Marc Benioff inherited the eBay slot in 2024. That listing closed at $200,100, and the winner pledged $1.5 million in all, against a GLIDE budget then described at about $31 million. The Buffett lunch as a product is over. The tape of the crypto seating is not.

Charlie Lee, Yoni Assia, and the Omaha Table

The auction allowed seven guests. Sun brought four after Changpeng Zhao, then at Binance, declined and sent Helen Hai from Binance Charity in his place. The table was a crypto roadshow sitting across from a man who had already called Bitcoin rat poison squared.

SUN’S OMAHA GUEST LIST

• Charlie Lee: Litecoin founder, seated for the long argument about coins that produce no cash flow.
• Yoni Assia: eToro chief executive, who later wrote that Buffett’s value-investing approach still rings true and went back to Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor.
• Chris Lee: then Huobi’s chief financial officer, one of two Lees at the table.
• Helen Hai: then head of Binance Charity Foundation, filling the chair Zhao skipped.

The conversion that can be documented did not happen on Buffett’s side of the table. It showed up in Assia’s public turn toward longer research and Graham’s book. Sun had written before the auction that, with the right talk, Buffett would fold crypto into his portfolio. That was the bet. The host donated the props and went back to cherry Coke.

Sun also brought non-coin gifts, including a bronze horse, both men having been born in the Year of the Horse 60 years apart, and a paper cutting of a mouse for the lunar year. None of those objects had a public second life like the Fold, because none of them forced Buffett to say, on live television, that he would never own the thing inside.

Sun Is Still Filming the Same Meal

On March 8, 2024, Sun posted a video of about five minutes and a line that the worth-it question was the wrong one. He called the seating a once-in-a-lifetime chance to sit with a renowned investor and to walk through his ideas. Charlie Munger had died in November 2023. Sun said another lunch might be impossible, hoped Buffett would live many more years, and noted that the auction had already been stopped, briefly revived in anonymous form, then halted again as Buffett’s health became the constraint.

He has not put the story down. In a March 26, 2026 TikTok he again dated the bid six years earlier and said he had learned Buffett’s value-investing rules while offering his own view on blockchain. In a later interview he called the meal totally worth it, said Buffett warned him to be careful about whom he married, and said he had told Buffett to invest in Tesla and Bitcoin. That pitch is the specimen. The man across the table gave the phone away.

In crypto’s own retelling, the lunch now sits as a plot point in a longer list of expensive public acts, not as the day American capital changed its mind. The joke that still lands is simple: he paid millions to recommend Bitcoin to someone who forwarded the coins to a homeless charity. Fan accounts even used the September 2026 chair news as a cue to recap the 2019 bid, which is how durable the clip has become. The meal is content. It is not a Berkshire position.

Berkshire’s Chair Changes Hands at 96

Buffett turned 96 on August 30, 2026. On September 18, 2026, Berkshire said he had been named chairman emeritus, remaining a director. His son Howard G. Buffett, 71, a director since 1993, became chairman. Greg Abel, already chief executive from the start of 2026 after Buffett left that job at the end of 2025, stays in the operating seat. Buffett wrote that he still had the best job in the world after serving the company since 1965, and that Abel had exceeded sky-high expectations.

Father Time always wins. He has, however, been generous with me.

Warren Buffett, letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, September 18, 2026

Sun’s 2024 fear that the window had closed is now a matter of corporate minutes, not only of health gossip. The investor he paid to sit with is still alive, still on the board, and still the man who said he would never own cryptocurrency. The charity that took the $4,567,888 also took the wallet. The last paid seating with him went to someone who did not put a Fold on the table.

GLIDE kept the check, the phone, and the $19,000,100 finale. Sun kept the footage, and he is still running it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did Justin Sun pay for lunch with Warren Buffett?

He paid $4,567,888. The eBay listing opened at $25,000 on May 26, 2019, ran five days, and drew 18 bids from five bidders before closing on May 31, 2019, above a $3,456,789 ceiling that anonymous winners had already hit in both 2012 and 2016.

Did Warren Buffett keep the Bitcoin Justin Sun gave him?

He said on February 24, 2020, that he does not own any cryptocurrency and never will, and the wallet was turned over to GLIDE. A public explorer address can keep showing balances after the handset has left the building; it does not prove Buffett controls the keys.

When did Warren Buffett stop auctioning the GLIDE lunch?

The last Buffett lunch sold on June 17, 2022, for $19,000,100 to an anonymous bidder after skipped years in 2020 and 2021. Marc Benioff took the eBay slot in 2024, when the winning bid was $200,100 and the winner pledged $1.5 million in all, against a GLIDE annual budget then put at about $31 million.

Why did Warren Buffett raise money for GLIDE?

His first wife, Susan Buffett, volunteered at the Tenderloin charity and introduced him to it before she died in 2004. GLIDE’s programs include meals, shelter, HIV and hepatitis C testing, job training, and children’s work, which is the use Buffett pointed to when he said the 2019 check would buy a lot of meals and beds.

What else did Justin Sun give Buffett besides the loaded phone?

He gave a bronze horse, a nod to both men being born in the Year of the Horse 60 years apart, and a traditional Chinese paper cutting of a mouse for that lunar year. Those gifts did not produce a follow-up television denial, because they did not require Buffett to hold a coin.

Berkshire posted the chair letter on September 18, 2026. The gifted coins were never a Berkshire position.