Not everyone knows that decentralization is a key aspect not only in the blockchain sphere, but also the popular p2p file sharing technology among Internet users based on the BitTorrent torrent protocol.
There are currently quite a lot of companies and developers working in this direction. But BitTorrent (BTT), which has the right to be called not only a pioneer, but also a leader in this industry, became the first project that is currently making another technological breakthrough through integration with blockchain technology.
The fact that BitTorrent will have its own cryptocurrency, which will motivate users to participate more actively in the project’s ecosystem, became known back in autumn 2018.
However, the real hype began in early 2019, when it became known about the preparations for the BitTorrent token sale on the Binance Launchpad. But first things first.
- Cryptocurrency BitTorrent. Background
- BitTorrent Cryptocurrency Concept (BTT)
- BitTorrent Blockchain Technology Features
- BTT Token Distribution
- BTT Public Tokensale
- BTT Listings and Course History
- BTT Airdrops
- Advantages and Disadvantages of BitTorrent Cryptocurrency
- Future Plans and Prospects for Investing in BitTorrent Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency BitTorrent. Background
BitTorrent is a popular communication protocol for decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), invented in 2001, and currently owned by the San Francisco-based IT company of the same name.
BitTorrent Inc. was founded in 2004 by protocol developer Bram Cohen in partnership with US-Indian entrepreneur Ashwin Navin.
In 2006, the company acquired µTorrent, its main competitor. Subsequently, this torrent client was transferred to the BitTorrent protocol and became one of the two main products of the company.
This was followed by a long stage of attempts to monetize the project by attracting venture investments to implement a BitTorrent-based trading platform for selling content. However, in 2008, having failed to realize this idea, Bram Cohen decided to recapitalize BitTorrent (Nevin had already left the company by that time), returned $ 17 million to investors and later again raised $ 7 million from them.
Then there were attempts to launch the BitTorrent Entertainment Network (an analogue of Netflix) and the BitTorrent Bundle (an Internet platform like Amazon). However, these projects were also recognized as unsuccessful and in 2015, Cohen lost his main investor and fired a third of employees. A year later, the search began for a potential buyer of the company.
This buyer was crypto billionaire Justin Sun, founder of the TRON cryptocurrency. He acquired BitTorrent for $ 140 million in June 2018, and he called it “the world's largest decentralized application.” At that moment, it became clear that the future of the project will be somehow connected with blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
According to information on the company's website, BitTorrent products “are used by more than 170 million people every month,” and through its “protocols, up to 40% of global Internet traffic passes daily." Given these grandiose figures, it becomes quite clear why Justin Sun did not miss the opportunity to take the finished platform with hundreds of millions of users and reformat it into a cryptocurrency project.
Currently, the BitTorrent team consists of 19 people, 12 of whom are developers. Bram Cohen left the company after its sale, focusing on the community that he had no business with Justin Sun.
BitTorrent Cryptocurrency Concept (BTT)
One of the common problems of the BitTorrent network was the slow download of files, the reason for which is the reluctance of users who have already downloaded torrents of interest to remain on the distribution. The TRON team came to the conclusion that in order to eliminate this nuance, it is necessary to somehow motivate the participants in the ecosystem.
As a result, it was decided to create BitTorrent cryptocurrency, with the help of which users who upload high-quality content to the network and those who support file distribution will be rewarded. Also, BTT cryptocurrency can be paid to increase the download speed. These and some additional features will be implemented through the decentralized BitTorrent Speed content delivery service.
The developers specify that the introduction of the BTT token into the BitTorrent ecosystem does not mean that the project will completely switch to a paid model - you can use the client on the same conditions as before. It’s just that a peculiar system of privileges and rewards will be added, with the help of which Sun hopes not only to improve his acquisition, but also significantly increase the number of active users.
By implementing BTT cryptocurrency, BitTorrent will provide a distributed infrastructure platform for dApps developers, which will allow users to earn money by renting free resources of their devices.
BitTorrent Blockchain Technology Features
BitTorrent is a TRC-10 utility token that runs on the TRON blockchain. It can be stored in all wallets that support this standard.
There is no such thing as mining in BitTorrent, because developers see no reason to encourage miners for using expensive equipment and the senseless waste of a huge amount of energy.
As a BitTorrent cryptocurrency consensus algorithm, DPoS (Ddelegated Proof-of-Stake) was chosen, suggesting the choice of delegates (representatives) by voting, who will monitor the stability of the system, and receive a certain reward for this. Those who vote will receive a portion of the remuneration paid to delegates.
It is assumed that the use of DPoS will create a democratic self-regulatory community that will eradicate an outdated mining model. The TRON blockchain (TRX) is based on the same algorithm.
A future mining function of BTT cryptocurrency rewards for supporting the distribution of torrents and the provision of a network of its reserve resources can be considered a kind of alternative to mining.
BTT Token Distribution
BTT's total supply is 990 billion coins. 170.4 billion tokens are in circulation.
According to WhitePaper BitTorrent, the distribution of BTT between project participants is organized as follows:
- sowing round of investments — 9%;
- closed private sale — 2%;
- partners — 4%;
- public token sale — 6%;
- BitTorrent Airdrop (for users of torrent clients) — 10%;
- TRON Airdrop (for TRON (TRX) holders) — 10.1%;
- project team — 19%;
- TRON Foundation — 20%;
- BitTorrent ecosystem (to reward active users of existing and future products) — 19.9%.
BTT Public Tokensale
The initial exchange offer of BitTorrent cryptocurrency (BTT) was held on January 28, 2019 on the Binance Launchpad platform. This was the first event on the site since the end of 2017, which was the impetus for the beginning of the IEO era.
The sale of 59.4 billion BTT (6% of all tokens) was carried out during two sessions — paired with BNB and TRX, and ended within 18 minutes.
Many complained that they could not take part in the token sale due to bugs in the work of the Binance Launchpad. CEO Binance Changpeng Zhao confirmed that certain technical difficulties were present and apologized to users for the inconvenience, promising to compensate in the form of an additional airdrop.
The value of tokens sold during IEO was approximately $ 7.2 million. The price of 1 BTT was $ 0.00012, which is one and a half times cheaper than investors paid in the closed private round ($ 0.00018), held in November 2018.
The maximum limit on the number of cryptocurrencies per user was the equivalent of $ 20 thousand, the minimum — 100 thousand BTT.
BTT Listings and Course History
On January 31, 2019, BitTorrent was added to Binance. On the same day, the exchange held an airdrop of 5,000 tokens for users who were unable to participate in the token sale for technical reasons.
Immediately after listing the BitTorrent cryptocurrency (BTT) on the Binance exchange, it traded 4 times more expensive than on IEO. Immediately after listing the BitTorrent cryptocurrency (BTT) on the Binance exchange, it traded 4 times more expensive than on IEO.
Over the next months, BitTorrent cryptocurrency was added to almost 40 more cryptocurrency exchanges and exchangers, including Kucoin, Binance, OKEx, Huobi, Bithumb, UPbit, gate.io and others.
The BTT cryptocurrency exchange periodically reacted to these events with sharp jumps, drawing a triangle on the chart, which gave hope for further growth.
However, at the end of February this triangle was broken down and until today, the price of BitTorrent cryptocurrency has consolidated in the range of $ 0,0007–0,0008 with rare jumps to the $ 0,0009 area. BitTorrent cryptocurrency is currently trading at ~ $ 0,00074.
BTT Airdrops
10% of tokens allocated for BitTorrent Airdrop promise to be distributed among existing users of µTorrent / BitTorrent by the end of the 2nd quarter of this year.
As for the BTT airdrop for TRX holders, the distribution of tokens will be carried out for 6 years — on the 11th day of each month, starting from February 11 of this year (the first three stages have already taken place).
However, there is no requirement to retain any minimum amount of TRX. No matter how many TRON tokens a user has, he will in any case receive the proportional amount of BitTorrent cryptocurrency due to him. The only condition is the storage of TRX on exchanges that support this airdrop (almost all that have trading pairs with BTT and TRX).
For the entire airdrop period, TRX holders will receive a total of 99.99 billion BTT.
Advantages and Disadvantages of BitTorrent Cryptocurrency
Among the obvious advantages that the BitTorrent ecosystem will receive after integration with the BTT cryptocurrency token, it is worth noting:
- increase network bandwidth by motivating existing and attracting new users;
- expanding the functionality of BitTorrent products;
- attracting the attention of dApps developers to the creation of applications based on the BitTorrent platform;
- motivation of the creators of the original content to switch from its implementation in centralized stores to a distribution model through BitTorrent services.
In addition, if Justin Sun succeeds in realizing everything he promised, hundreds of millions of users of torrent clients into which BTT wallets will be implemented (and in the future TRX), will accelerate the universal adoption of cryptocurrencies in the world.
However, there are also negative points for which many criticize the project.
Firstly, there are no guarantees that users of the BitTorrent protocol will massively respond to their reward system and thereby speed up the network. And, even if this happens, there are serious concerns about the ability of the TRON blockchain to process all operations carried out on the BitTorrent network.
Secondly, the new business model of the project looks very controversial. After all, torrent technology has long been disliked by authorities and companies that own copyright to content. But if earlier cases of prosecution for copyright infringement when using the BitTorrent protocol were isolated, after the introduction of a token with real value into the game, a very tough campaign to combat piracy can begin.
And thirdly, it is very alarming that the talk about BTT token mainly occurs in the crypto community, and not among torrent users. Although in fact, given the focus of the project, it should be vice versa.
Future Plans and Prospects for Investing in BitTorrent Cryptocurrency
By the beginning of the second quarter of 2019, testing of the user interface of the developed BTT wallet should be completed. The first client to implement support for BitTorrent Speed and BTT (in the 2nd quarter of 2019) should be µTorrent Classic, which is the most popular torrent application among users of the Windows OS.
The developers are also working to arrange the delivery of content from TRON-based games to the BitTorrent Live streaming service, the launch of which was announced a few weeks ago.
In the 3rd quarter, they plan to add TRX support to the µTorrent built-in wallet, as well as begin integration of the BitTorrent network with dApps.
As for investing in BTT cryptocurrency, everything is very ambiguous here, since Justin Sun is conducting too aggressive a marketing campaign to attract attention to the project. At one time, the promotion of TRON was carried out in a similar way, which eventually led to a hype pump, on which Sun and his team merged their tokens to trusting investors at inflated prices.
There is a very big risk that the same thing will happen with BTT cryptocurrency. But TRON Foundation, the BitTorrent team, partners and early investors of the project jointly hold more than 50% of the project tokens. Imagine what will happen to the BitTorrent course when these stocks are poured onto the market! Therefore, long-term investment in BTT can be associated with quite serious risks.
At the same time, it is doubtful that San and Co will merge their tokens right now - most likely the course will be rigidly preamped before this. It is possible that this will happen on the news about the above releases. So those who want to make money on BTT should keep abreast.
Well, for those who do not want to take risks, at least install µTorrent in order to receive the promised BTT-airdrop and in the future earn some more tokens from distributing downloaded torrents.