Justin Sun purchased a charity lunch with Buffett for $4.57 million in 2019.

Tron founder Justin Sun set a record in 2019 by winning the right to have lunch with Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett for $4,567,888 in an eBay charity auction, with the proceeds donated to the Glide Foundation, a homeless service organization in San Francisco.

Buffett has previously disparaged Bitcoin, calling it "probably rat poison squared," an illusion, and lacking unique value, comparing it to the zero on a roulette wheel during that year's shareholder meeting. Sun expressed hope to change Buffett's stance through communication and planned to invite industry figures. The lunch, originally scheduled for July 25, was postponed due to Sun's claim of kidney stones; during this time, he denied Chinese media reports about illegal fundraising and money laundering and publicly apologized for excessive self-promotion. The lunch was rescheduled, and Glide confirmed it had received the donations.

The auction has been held since 2000. 2019 was not the last year: it was suspended in 2020-2021 due to the pandemic, and in 2022, an anonymous buyer purchased the 21st and what Buffett announced as the last solo lunch for about $19 million, raising approximately $53.2 million for Glide in total. In 2026, he will co-auction with Stephen Curry, with an anonymous bidder offering about $9 million. The public reason for stopping the solo lunches was age and the amount raised, and English reports did not attribute this to the recent gathering.

"You can't make a good deal with bad people" is a principle of character long cited by Buffett and Charlie Munger, but public materials did not specifically apply it to this lunch. Berkshire has not allocated Bitcoin as a company reserve since.

The high-priced lunch tied cryptocurrency promotion to charity auctions but did not alter Berkshire's asset allocation discipline. The auction record was subsequently broken by a higher bid, indicating that the mechanism is still in place.

In market mechanics, the buyer seeks to purchase exposure alongside an idol and industry visibility, while the seller monetizes time for charitable investors. The driving force is the spread of the record bid itself, not an investment agreement. Funds move from bidders' accounts to Glide. Beneficiaries are the charity and the projects gaining exposure, while the pressure falls on those misreading the lunch as an investment endorsement.

Source: Public Information